


Blue Meanie

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: BAMF Nebula (Marvel), Dum-E and U are good boys, Found Family, Getting Together, Hurt Tony Stark, Kid Fic, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter is 18, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Slow Burn, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:48:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25100398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When Peter Parker returns from dust, he longs to re-establish a connection with his friend and mentor Tony Stark. But while Peter's been gone, Mr. Stark seems to have acquired a daughter and an unusually close relationship with Thanos' daughter Nebula. One thing becomes clear. If Peter wants to stay in Mr. Stark's life, he's going to have to make nice with the Blue Meanie.
Relationships: Gamora/Nebula (Marvel), Nebula & Tony Stark, Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 37
Kudos: 131
Collections: Anonymous





	1. There and Back Again

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Though I think it's pretty clear from context this isn't what's happening, there is a point in this chapter where one character interprets the actions of another as a suicide attempt. If you aren't comfortable with that sort of thing, you can skip to the end of the chapter after Phil Coulson is introduced without missing anything major. Take care of yourselves and stay safe out there, kids!

The big blue robot lady from Titan is standing vigil at Mr. Stark’s med room door when Peter finally gets there – leaning against the hull of the helicarrier and giving burning black looks to anyone who passes by in the hallway.

It gives Peter just a few seconds of pause. He’s feeling twitchy and jumbled to begin with, and now he has to justify himself to an alien robot. It feels like one thing too many on top of the wobbling Jenga tower that is his life right now.

Of course, he’d wanted to go with Mr. Stark from the beginning. But right after the battle a troop of SHIELD medics had descended upon the man, and Peter had been bundled off in the opposite direction, along with Dr. Strange and a few of the others, to debrief on the whole coming back from ashes thing.

Peter should really, really never be tested under interrogation, because he’d ended up telling Melinda May everything she wanted to know and a whole lot more. It’s still a bit of a blur, but he thinks he even told her where he hides the portable hard drive that holds all his porn.

After that mortifying incident, he’d had to spend an hour on the phone with May while she cried, assuring her that he was fine. Peter may have cried too. Look, he knows it hasn’t actually felt like much time has gone by for either of them, but it’s been a traumatic day, and he went to _space_ , and then people tried very seriously to kill him, so he figures it’s nothing to be too ashamed of.

But no matter what’s gone on up to this point, Peter knows he shouldn’t take it out on the blue lady – Nova? Aurora? No, _Nebula_. That’s her name. He needs to thank her. She’d been right there in the middle of the battle with Peter and Mr. Stark. And after Mr. Stark had used the gauntlet, it had been her with the foresight to charge into action while Peter had just clung to the man’s armor, sobbing and telling him they’d won while the light slowly faded from his eyes.

At which point Peter had been jerked unceremoniously away from Mr. Stark’s body and Wanda Maximoff had been pressed into a kneeling position in his place. Nebula had crouched down beside the her, held a dagger to her cheek and growled “You’d better know how to fix this, witch.”

Her tone had sent a shiver of fear down Peter’s spine, and he hadn’t even been the one under threat. He’d vaguely noted Wanda’s protests, but Nebula had only pressed the blade in closer, sending a thick bead of blood trickling down Wanda’s cheek.

“Dig deep, little witch,” Nebula had hissed. “Or I will.”

It started with a tingle of red fire sparking from Wanda’s fingertips, growing into waves of scarlet lightning pushing into Mr. Stark’s chest. Peter had watched as the damage to Mr. Stark’s body – the gruesome burns across his body – receded like an ebbing tide.

He’d gone from still and eerily silent to coughing and shivering and looking around wildly before groping for Nebula’s hand.

“That’s as far back as I manage,” Wanda had gasped, slumping weakly forward, but Nebula had already dropped the knife and had wrapped her arms around Mr. Stark to support the limp weight of his body.

“Insect child, what are you staring at?”

Peter blinks and stutters under the force of the sentry’s full attention.

“Um,” he says. “Well, uh, it’s actually Sp-spider-Man. I’m Peter. Peter Parker? We met. Before. In Space. And I was hoping to see Mr. Stark?”

Fuck, he should say it with more confidence than that, shouldn’t he? Nebula, for one, doesn’t look convinced.

“He is resting,” she says, lips pursing in an irritated line.

“I won’t disturb him,” Peter talks quickly. Too quickly. “I can be really, really quiet. I just, um, want to see him.”

Her brow wrinkles in displeasure, clearly not used to her authority being questioned like this.

“No visitors,” she says. “Someone will let you know if that changes.”

Peter takes a deep breath and straightens his spine. If he were capable of just leaving this alone, it might be better. But he isn’t. Concern about Mr. Stark has been spiraling around his head like a snowball, getting bigger and bigger, since he was pulled off the battlefield. Now he feels like he’ll burst out of his skin if he can’t see him. He just wants to make sure he’s breathing and stable, and it feels deeply inadequate to accept anyone else’s word for this.

“Look,” he says, moving so he’s less than a foot from Nebula, crowding into her space. “I’m not leaving until I get to see him. So either we can both wait out here together for hours, or you can let me in.”

She lifts one shoulder in a shrug, face still set in a scowl.

“Suit yourself.”

Stepping carefully, Peter positions himself a few feet away from the woman and mimics her position against the wall. He considers, for a moment, the thing that might irritate her most. From the look she’s shooting him – black boiling tar – the answer might well be him. Which makes this easier.

“Have you ever seen Star Wars?” he asks.

She tilts her head to the side, like a dog considering whether or not to attack

“It’s about space, so maybe you can relate,” Oh. Oh, is her face turning purple? He was not expecting that so soon. “Let me set the scene for you. Blasters blasting, soldiers falling. And in the middle of it all, the man himself. Darth Vader …”

He’s just to the point of C3PO and R2-D2 wandering the desert of Tatooine when he’s unceremoniously jerked closer to her by the collar of his borrowed SHIELD t-shirt.

“You. Must. Stop.” Nebula growls at him, their faces inches apart.

Peter lets his mouth spread into a wide, smug grin.

“That could be arranged,” he says. “If you let me inside.”

She shoves him back a few feet, somehow manages to scowl even harder, and then points one of her fingers in his face.

“If you upset him, I will flay you alive,” she says. “Slowly. And I will leave your flesh for the carrion birds.”

Peter holds both his hands up in surrender.

“Understood,” he says.

One last withering look, and she steps aside and pushes the door open.

Peter can still feel her gaze burning at his back when he steps inside, but it’s the last thing he can concentrate on.

Mr. Stark is there in a narrow cot, hooked to an array of medical equipment. The hiss and beep of the monitors is overwhelming, but Peter can see from the slight movement of the bed sheet that he’s breathing shallow, steady breaths.

For what feels like a long time he just watches, taking in all the details – the dark hair shot through with a little more silver than Peter remembers, the beard a little thinner in a way that makes Mr. Stark’s face look softer, somehow. There are tiny crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes that Peter remembers being there only when he smiled.

When he dares to examine lower, he sees that Mr. Stark’s entire right arm, along with his torso, is covered over in thick bandages. Higher up, Peter can see a gray, ashy scar sending tendrils up his neck and into his hairline. It looks like desiccated charcoal, the skin flaking and peeling away.

Peter’s stomach turns over at the thought. It’s like he burned from the inside out.

“Hey, kid.”

The voice pulls all of Peter’s attention, raspy and weak, but still unmistakable.

Their eyes lock, and Peter can feel every muscle in his body tense and contract. He doesn’t know what to say, now he’s here. He only knows that every part of him has been longing to have those whiskey-dark eyes on him since the moment he watched them fade away. But now that he’s their entire focus, he doesn’t know what to do with that.

They stay like that for a long moment, just looking. Then the corner of Mr. Stark’s mouth quirks up in a grin, and Peter’s gone. He stumbles over his own feet getting to the bed, but keeps right on going until he’s throwing himself at Mr. Stark, gripping his uninjured side with a hand and burying his face in the crook of his shoulder. _Perfect._

Mr. Stark smells like antiseptic – sharp and medicinal – but there’s still the scent of the battle on him. Sweat and motor oil and adrenaline, which maybe Peter shouldn’t be able to smell, but he can. It’s a little like the smell right after it rains. Petrichor. That’s what it’s called.

Minus the antiseptic, it’s exactly what Peter remembers Mr. Stark smelling like right after he tried an unnecessary experiment on himself with Peter there for supervision. An unfortunately regular occurrence. This feels like those moments when the experiment had been a success, and Tony had pulled Peter in for a victory hug.

Those were the best moments.

For a second, though, Peter second guesses himself. His fingers glide over the bandaging at Mr. Stark’s waist, and he starts to pull back. He could be hurting him. But the hand on his back flexes, pulling him in a little bit tighter, and he gets the message. It’s not time to move yet.

Tears are leaking out of the corners of Peter’s eyes and soaking into the medical gown Mr. Stark is wearing. He shouldn’t have any tears left after how many times he’s cried today. He sniffles in an attempt to get them to stop, but the only thing it does is encourage Mr. Stark to move his good hand from Peter’s back up into his hair. He strokes and whispers “Shh, shh” into Peter’s ear, and Peter’s whole body trembles with it.

He thinks, fleetingly, that he never wants to move from right here. Then he’s being unceremoniously jerked back by the collar of his t-shirt, lifted off the ground so that he’s barely able to touch the tiles on tiptoes.

Nebula sets him down a few feet from the bed, scowl still heavy on her face.

“Best not to cry on the medical equipment,” she says. “We wouldn’t want any complications.”

Peter’s face goes hot, and no doubt red. He can feel the sticky tear tracks drying on his face. Mr. Stark just laughs indulgently.

“Be nice, Neb,” he huffs. “And try not to strangle my protégé.”

“If I wanted him strangled, he’d be strangled,” she replies.

Self-consciously, Peter wipes at his dripping nose, turning his head away from the bed to hide from Mr. Stark’s eyes boring into him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

He turns back after most of the moisture is wiped away from his face.

“Don’t,” Mr. Stark says, and Peter could swear he sounds choked-up too. But maybe it’s just damaged vocal cords. “It’s damn good to see you, Pete. I’d half convinced myself I dreamed you the first time.”

He says the last with a laugh in his voice that transforms the next second into a body-wracking cough.

It makes Peter want to reach out to him again, to do something to soothe and comfort, but he knows Nebula would be on him the second he tried.

“I’m here, sir,” he says instead. “Thanks to you, I guess. Though I don’t really understand how. Agent May said something about time travel …”

He really shouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else at this point, but he can’t help the way his brain whirrs with possibilities. He wants to pour over all the schematics, hear a full accounting of everything.

A smile twitches at Tony’s lips, like he’s guessing the direction of Peter’s thoughts.

“I’ll tell you all about it, kid,” he says. “FRIDAY, will you pull up diagrams T-165 through 169?”

“Belay that, FRIDAY,” Nebula interjects.

“Hey-“

“What part of recovering from near death do you not understand?” the woman says, crossing her arms stubbornly.

“She’s right, Mr. Stark,” Peter says in support. “You can show me later.”

He flicks his eyes over to Nebula, expecting at the very least a nod of approval, but all he receives is another stormy glare.

“Much later,” she mutters.

*

Of course she recognizes the boy. If she didn’t know him from the bedtime stories Tony tells Morgan, she could hardly miss the shrine by the kitchen sink – the photographs and knickknacks arranged just so, and Tony reaching out to rap a friendly tattoo on the shelf every time he passes. Peter Parker, their own personal household god.

Nebula hates him on sight: that bottom lip stuck out just the tiniest bit, the eyes already wet with unshed tears. He’s on the verge of becoming a quivering mess even before she lets him into the sick room. Nebula isn’t dumb. She knows trouble when she sees it.

The job of keeping Tony Stark alive is an altogether more challenging one than Nebula thought it would be when she undertook it.

At the time, it had seemed simple enough. Floating aimlessly through space, there were only so many choices to be made. He eats before you eat, he sleeps when you cannot. And then, of course, there are the bits of you you can strip away. Bits that you’ve never been so fond of anyway – that you maybe hate a little for their foreignness – but that can find their purpose to boost the emergency beacon out just that little bit further or encourage the life support system to hang on for just one cycle more.

In the moment, it had seemed only logical. What did Nebula have to carry on for, after all? Only vengeance. Her sister was dead, her planet long cleansed of anyone who might still know her or look upon her kindly.

She had extracted his promise their first night on the ship, before the decay set in.

“You will destroy him?” She had asked. “When you get the chance? Utterly.”

“Yes,” Tony had replied, face still empty and crumpled, eyes glassy and far away. “We’ll make him pay.”

It was enough to be getting on with.

And, slowly, she grew fond of him. It was hard to resist.

As the days went by, she would sometimes catch him smiling at her, a small proof that mind and body were stitching together slowly. She didn’t know what to make of it, but her scowls didn’t seem to deter him.

Tony smiled, and taught her games, and said “You did good, Blue,” even when she didn’t understand the frivolity right away. Nebula liked the way, when he looked at her, it was directly in her eyes, gaze not straying away to her cobbled-together skull or her whirring mechanical hand.

It was a rare enough combination that she knew her first instinct was right. He should live. She should assure it. And the vow didn’t end after the Captain returned them to Terra. It didn’t end, but it did get harder.

For someone who spends so much time wrapped in layers of armor, Tony Stark has a surprising expansive and vulnerable underbelly.

Nebula learned quickly that she was far from the only stray that Tony has picked up and claimed as his own. He doesn’t just wear his heart outside his body, the idiot. He breaks little pieces of it off and gives them away like they were nothing. Rhodey and Harley and Riri and Nat and Clint and Banner and even, in his way, Steve Rogers, carry a part of him with them.

Protecting Tony is a bit like playing a game of chess with one caveat – sacrifice no pawns. So for every piece of himself that Tony sends out to roam the world, she sends a little part of herself too. Hers are more practical. Tiny sensors, smaller than a thumbnail, listening, watching, sending whispers back to her in case trouble arises, in case she is needed. She hears them even in her sleep, a white noise that would wake her immediately if ever it stopped.

It has taken years, but Nebula feels she has everything in balance. And into this careful equilibrium walks the spider child, ready to upend everything. She saw the way Tony had looked at him in those final moments, grasping for the boy’s hand, face desperate to hold on.

If Tony’s other strays are pieces of his heart, then Peter Parker is the shrapnel threatening to tear it apart. She’s seen Tony in the aftermath of the boy’s death once, the crumpled pitiful mess of him. Nebula’s spent five years trying to rebuild him from that loss, and she doesn’t want to do it again.

Maybe under other circumstances, Nebula would treat him more generously. But today has been a hell of a day. She’s faced down her past self, and killed her. She’s watched Tony die and held a blade to the witch’s throat while she brought him back. She’s exhausted, and ill-tempered, and not inclined to abide some simpering fool throwing himself at a man recovering from death and proceeding to cry all over him.

Somehow, it’s even more grating when he agrees with her than when he’s trying to undermine her. Nebula can feel him trying to charm her, and it makes her grind her teeth.

She is only saved from slapping the fool by the door creaking open and Happy shuffling inside, leading a hesitant Morgan behind him.

“Look who I brought, Boss,” he says, pushing her forward with a gentle hand between her shoulder blades. “She wouldn’t stop asking to see you. Persistent, this one.”

“Stubborn is the word you’re looking for, Hap,” Tony replies. “She comes by it honest. Hey there, Babydoll.”

Eyebrows scrunched together in confusion and alarm, Morgan takes in the medical equipment, the bandages, Tony splayed out on the bed.

“Daddy?” she asks in a timid, tearful voice that makes Nebula want to pull her close, tight and protected.

She approaches her father’s side with caution, tiny steps forward until her father beckons her with one hand. Then she walks more determinedly, and climbs up onto the mattress on his uninjured side. One hand ghosts over his bandaged arm, but she doesn’t touch.

“Are you going to die?” she asks, voice no more than a whisper, but back and shoulders straight.

“No, Baby,” Tony says, running a hand through her hair. “I’m gonna be just fine.”

Morgan looks over her shoulder at Nebula for confirmation of this fact. Throat aching, Nebula nods and places a comforting hand on Morgan’s back. She’s always amazed at how tiny the girl’s bones feel under her hand, delicate like a bird’s.

“He’s getting better,” she tells Morgan. “Everything’s alright.”

“Okay,” Morgan says, nodding slowly. “Okay.”

She buries herself into Tony’s side, and Tony reaches out and takes Nebula’s hand, linking their fingers together. He wraps both their arms around Morgan, pulling her in closer to him.

Nebula’s pulse jumps and flickers abnormally, and she grips cautiously harder. Just a portion of her true strength, but enough for both of them to feel. She feels cold in her gears and joints at the flash of self-knowledge that coalesces. These two creatures beneath her hand are so fragile that a misplaced grip could end them. Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it cruel? That someone can be so breakable and yet so necessary all at once.

*

If it is a dream, Tony’s content to luxuriate in it for as long as he’s allowed. They’re giving him something for the pain – morphine maybe – pumped directly into his veins. It doesn’t stop the ache of the burns, but it makes everything feel fuzzy around the edges and allows him to become easily distracted from the pain.

Peter Parker walking into his medbay room is a very sufficient distraction. Tony’s imagined this scene so many times. Kid resurrected, grand reunion, celebration all around. This isn’t quite what he pictured, so maybe not a dream. When he imagined it, he was always cool and collected in the face of the miracle. He was the same man who – the first time Peter tried to hug him – told him “We’re not there yet.”

But they are there now, and Tony isn’t playing it cool in any sense. He’s a mess, bundling the kid close, eyes aching even though he can’t cry properly right now. His tear ducts are clogged from all the smoke, and probably a little singed as well. Everything else on his body is, or feels like it.

In a way, it’s comforting. Sure, Peter’s hair is fantasy soft under his fingers, but his hand stroking even gently at Tony’s bandages makes him grit his teeth in pain. Also, he’s pretty sure the kid is kneeling on his IV, because the gentle fuzziness of the good drugs starts to recede a little. It’s the pinch he needs to know it’s all real. They did it. Somehow, they fucking did it.

It’s startling when their embrace is cut short by Neb hauling Peter off by the back of his shirt like a drowned kitten. Maybe it’s a good thing, though. Tony doesn’t have enough handle on his self-control right now to stop, and he worries about veering into creepy uncle territory.

Right. Oh, right. That’s a part of his brain he has to worry about now. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. He’s just out of practice blocking it out, is all. He can get used to it again.

At the end there, when Peter and he were spending 36-hour jags locked up in the lab together working on the Iron Spider armor, Tony had become practically the king of self denial. He can get there again. Just maybe not when 60 percent of his skin has just been burned from his body.

Nebula is giving Peter her patented Death Glare, and Peter is overcompensating with extreme politeness like he always does when he’s got the slightest inclination that someone doesn’t adore him. It’s disconcerting. Tony had always imagined they’d get along swimmingly if – _when –_ he got Peter back. They’ll have to work on that. Blue can be a tough one to crack open, but once you’ve got her …

The conundrum slips from his mind when he sees Happy push open the door, guiding Morgan inside. The first coherent thought Tony has is that she shouldn’t be here. He’s going to give Happy an earful about it. He must look like something out of a horror movie right now, and he’s tried so hard to shield Morgan from the nastiest parts of the life he leads.

He feels a warm mixture of horror and pride build in his chest when he realizes she isn’t going to cry or cower away from the sight of him. Instead, she walks determinedly to his bedside and climbs up on the mattress beside him.

Her dark eyes are so solemn when she looks directly in his face and asks him if he’s going to die. She must have learned it from Neb, that level of stoicism. Tony tries not to be grateful she’s already so good at it. He wants her not to need that reserve.

“No, baby,” he says, heart breaking a little. “I’m gonna be just fine.”

He tries to make his voice as strong as possible when he speaks, but his vocal chords are still a little fried, so it doesn’t really work. Morgan looks up to Nebula for confirmation.

Only once she gets that reassurance does Morgan allow her stiff shoulders to relax, and she curls into his side. Reaching for Nebula’s hand, Tony pulls them both in close. His girls, right where they ought to be. As content as he feels, though, there is one more thing Tony wants.

Nebula might take some warming up, but Tony’s certain that Morgan and Peter will hit it off immediately. But when he looks up to motion Peter over, the kid is gone.

*

Peter braces himself against the wall outside the sick room. He’s fine, really. It’s just a lot to process. The day has been full of shocks, and he’s managed to take most of them in stride. This feels different, somehow.

Mr. Stark has a kid. A daughter. A whole family, it seems, that Peter knows nothing about and has no place in. The image of them together is stamped on the inside of his eyelids – Nebula and the little girl leaning into Tony like they’re vines and he’s the sun.

Is Nebula the girl’s mother, Peter wonders? Or is the connection between her and Tony something different? Not that it matters. It’s nothing to do with him at all.

Except. Except where does that leave Peter? Much as he used to struggle against it, he knows Mr. Stark always thought of him as a surrogate son. A protégé. An heir, maybe. He won’t need Peter to fill that role anymore, though. Not with a kid of his own.

Peter can see the way it’ll be. There will be promises to stay in touch, to work together. Tony will have every intention of fulfilling them, but won’t find time for it with all his other obligations.

It will be like it was before. He’ll get pawned off on Happy, and end up with nothing but a string of unanswered texts and the memory of how they used to be. It’s fine. Mr. Stark is alive, so it can’t be all that bad. No sense dwelling on the past.

Peter lets his head flop back against the bulkhead and bangs it gently. _One, two, three. Fuck._

“Are you having some sort of spider-related fit right now?”

Peter jumps a little at Happy’s voice. The man gives him one of the little grimaces that are as close as he ever gets to really smiling.

“I’m not having a fit,” Peter grumbles.

His stomach is tied up in knots. He feels like he’s been on the world’s very worst roller coaster.

“Well good,” Happy says. “Then I don’t have to make myself scarce.”

Peter shrugs noncommittally. He knows he should be more enthusiastic to see Happy, but he feels a little emptied out at the moment.

“Free hallway,” he says.

The silence sits heavy between them until Happy pushes it aside with a warm hand on Peter’s shoulder.

“He missed you like hell, you know,” he says.

Peter’s heart gives a little jolt at that before he schools himself.

“Seems like he kept himself too busy for much of that,” he replies, hating the whine he hears in his own voice.

He doesn’t begrudge Mr. Stark a happy family. He’s just feeling unmoored, and latching onto this one stupid thing.

“Sorry,” he grumbles. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Hey, you’ve had a day and a half,” Happy says. “I get it. How ‘bout you let me buy you a cheeseburger, kid? I know that always helps me.”

Peter nods his assent, and lets Happy lead the way through the twisting corridors of the helicarrier until they come to a large mess hall with a bank of windows along one wall. Outside, Peter can see the sky tinted the pale pink of sunrise. It’s morning already, and he had no idea.

“Oh,” he says, a little shocked to have missed the passage of so many hours.

“So maybe not a cheeseburger,” Happy concedes.

They get breakfast instead and settle into a table in a corner away from the few SHIELD agents taking their breaks.

Peter shovels bites of food into his mouth mechanically, stomach growling in hunger the moment he takes his first bite. His body, it seems, have just been reminded that food is a thing it needs after being undusted. The giant pile of syrup-soaked waffles disappears quickly.

Happy, in contrast, pokes at his spinach and mushroom omelet with a displeased grimace.

“Should’ve known better,” he says. “Everybody overdoes their omelets. It’s a very delicate thing.”

It makes Peter grin despite himself to hear the complaints. He’d almost forgotten what a food snob Happy was.

When Peter’s inhaled all of his breakfast, he kicks Happy’s ankles under the plastic table to get his attention.

“How old’s the kid?” he asks.

“Morgan?” Happy says through a mouthful of egg.

Peter shrugs. Morgan is a nice name, he thinks.

“She’s four and a half. Don’t let her hear you say she’s just four. She has very firm opinions about those six months.”

Peter can feel his eyes go wide at the number. He was dusted five years ago, Agent May had said. That happened quickly.

Luckily, Happy doesn’t seem to track his thought process.

“You’ll like her a lot,” he’s saying. “She’s a firecracker. And so smart.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

“Nature and nurture. Poor kid never had a chance.”

Peter snorts at that.

“Building robots already?”

“God help us, we’ve managed to keep her away from the electronics so far.”

“Good luck with that,” Peter says. “This one time, Pepper tried to ban Tony from coffee. Something about caffeine and his heart. Guess how long until he was grinding contraband beans with a vice and brewing a cup with a Bunsen burner?”

“Forces of nature, aren’t they?”

All Peter can manage is to smile and nod. Now that his stomach is full, and the sugar is hitting, he’s starting to feel restless. He jiggles his leg under the table. He wonders if this breakfast is Happy’s way of re-establishing the status quo, reminding Peter that there’s a chain of communication, and that his reports go to him and not Mr. Stark.

“I think she’d like to meet you,” Happy says. “If you wanna go back? Tony’s told her a lot –”

“No,” Peter interrupts. “No, I, uh. I can’t, Happy. I gotta get to May, you know?”

Peter can see the New York skyline moving closer out the window, and suddenly he’s desperate to get back to May.

“I think we gotta land somewhere in Weehawken, kiddo,” Happy says. “It’s gonna be a while. We got plenty of time.”

Hours, probably, Peter thinks. Hours to land, and let everyone disembark, and there’s always a chance that someone else will want to debrief him. He can’t stand the thought of it. He just wants to fall into May’s arms and breath in her lavender and eucalyptus smell, and feel surrounded by someone who loves him unequivocally.

But they aren’t actually flying all that high, and the suit is designed for high altitudes.

“Thanks for breakfast, Happy,” he says, standing abruptly.

“Kid, you hear anything I just said?”

“Sure,” Peter says. He gives Happy another perfunctory grin and a pat on the back. “I’m gonna make my own way back. I’ll see you around, man.”

He turns, only to have Happy grab his wrist.

“Hold on there just a second, bucko.”

Peter turns back.

“Bucko?” he says with a snort.

“Just wait for one damn minute, would you?”

Happy’s rifling around in his pockets and muttering to himself.

“Where’d I put the damn thing …”

After a long search, he pulls a sleek smart phone out of one of the inner pockets of his suit and holds it out to Peter.

“Take that,” he says. “Even if you’ve managed not to break yours, it probably won’t work after all this time. It’s got my landline already programmed in.”

Peter’s phone did get crushed in the battle, and it’s happened enough time son patrol that Happy wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a sweet gesture, but Peter opts for snark instead of thanks.

“You’ve still got a landline?” he says. “You work at a state-of-the-art tech company.”

“Hey,” Happy snaps at him. “Shove it. It’s a precaution.”

“Happy, I can’t take your phone,” he insists, trying to hand it back.

“Do this for me, will ya? Use it to call if you need help. I just … I don’t like the idea of you out there alone.”

It’s weird to see Happy so close to admitting he cares about him. At first he really had been rude and distant, and then he pretended to be to keep up the appearance of being a tough guy. Now something’s shifted, apparently.

“Not going soft on me, are you Happy?”

Happy’s expressive grimace tells Peter that he dislikes being called out on his soft, marshmallowy insides.

“The boss would never forgive me if I let you just run off on your own without back-up,” he says grumpily.

“Sure,” Peter says. “This is all about him.”

“Don’t go running your mouth off, kiddo. This doesn’t mean I like you.”

“Uh-huh,” Peter says with a grin.

“I mean it!”

“Whatever you say, man. And, uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Happy says, voice a little softer.

Peter shoves the phone in the pocket of his borrowed sweats and leaves.

“Hey, don’t use all my minutes!” the man shouts after him, when he nears the door. “It’s nights and weekends for chatting with your little friends.”

“1996 wants its phone plan back!” Peter shouts back with a little wave.

It isn’t difficult to find the helicarrier’s hangar. He just heads down whenever he has the option, and eventually ends up in a cavernous room filled with smaller aircraft and, in one docking bay, a cherry-red convertible. That’s a weird one.

There’s a door on the far side of the hangar that, when opened, will drop down wide to allow for mid-air take-offs. It requires a security code to operate, but cracking it isn’t actually much of a challenge He’ll drop a line to Director Fury or Deputy Director Hill later to let them know they need to update their security.

The wind whips powerfully when Peter lowers the door, but the day outside is shaping up to be sunny and clear. It strikes Peter as strange that, after everything that’s happened, the sun is shining so bright and carefree.

He leans over the edge and sees the harbor below them, the city looming nearby.

“Mr. Parker.”

Peter turns at his name to see a black-suited agent standing a few feet back, hands held up in a placating gesture. The man has a receding hairline and gentle blue eyes that are trained steadily on him.

Peter’s shocked to realize he recognizes the man. His picture was one of a few taped up around Tony’s work station in the Stark Tower lab. Mr. Stark had told him the story once, both of them hiding away from the overwhelming noise and bustle of a New Year’s party, Mr. Stark several glasses of whiskey deep.

“Agent Coulson,” Peter greets the man. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Coulson gives him a mild smile.

“That seems to be going around lately,” he replies. “I could say the same of you.”

“Yeah, just doesn’t stick like it used to, huh?” Peter says.

“Count me grateful. You know you’re not authorized to be on this level, don’t you Mr. Parker?”

Peter can’t help but grin back at him. He’s so close to the edge that he can still feel the wind buffeting his back and ruffling his t-shirt.

“If they really didn’t want me here, they’dve made it harder to access,” he says. “You guys should seriously upgrade your systems, by the way.”

“I appreciate the note,” Coulson says. “Now could you do me a favor and step back from the edge there? You’re making me a little twitchy.”

Peter looks over his shoulder. They’re getting close to midtown now. He can see the approaching outlines of skyscrapers below them.

“That would kind of defeat my purpose,” he says.

Agent Coulson’s hands haven’t moved from their placating position – palms to Peter. He takes a few steps forward onto the ramp, bracing his knees as he walks along the creaky grating.

“Look, Mr. Parker, I’ve been exactly where you are right now. I know how it feels to come back and realize the world kept moving without you. But it’s not always going to feel like this.”

For a moment, Peter’s struck dumb by the insight. Does it show on his face, he thinks? How out of place he feels in this moment? How superfluous?

“It’s not?” he asks, voice coming out hoarse.

“The way you fit with people is going to change, but with the ones who matter, you’ll make it work. Sometimes it’s better. Sometimes it’s really, really good. But you won’t know that unless you give it a chance.”

Peter nods.

“Thank you,” he says, softly. “I think I kind of needed to hear that.”

A bigger smile breaks across Coulson’s face. He seems almost relieved.

“Good,” he says. “That’s good. Why don’t you step back here, then?”

In his periphery, though, Peter sees his destination. The shining edifice of the Chrysler Building glints at him in the sunlight, and it’s not so far down. Definitely a jump he can make.

“I’d like to talk more, but this is sort of my stop,” he tells the agent.

“What?”

“You should visit Mr. Stark, Agent Coulson. I think he’d really like to see you.”

“Peter –“ Coulson protests, but Peter doesn’t have ears for it. He backs up a few steps, then takes a running leap off the edge of the ramp.

“Peter don’t!”

The broken cry hits Peter at the same time as he hits the air. He feels a flush of guilt as a few things about the conversation click into place. He apparently owes Agent Coulson a big apology. Later, though.

For now, Peter reaches out a finger to click a button on the wrist guards he’s wearing and feels the cool trickle of his nanite Iron Spider suit form around his body, softening the harshness of the wind rushing around his body and howling in his ears.

He allows himself to freefall for a long moment, enjoying the weightlessness of the it, the freedom. There’s always that beautiful moment when he’s swinging – between one web and the next – when falling feels like flying.

As the cityscape approaches, he sights his target, makes a few calculations in his head, and adjusts his body into an elegant dive position.

From up here, he can see it all laid out below him from the bright letters that mark Stark Tower to the green expanse of Central Park covered in a veil of early morning mist.

At a precisely-timed moment, Peter flicks out his wrist and braces as his webbing attaches around the neck of one of the Chrysler gargoyles. He swings up in an arc, shoots out another web to steady himself and lands with a thud that reverberates up his legs on the head of a streamlined silver eagle.

Peter crouches and retracts his mask, letting the chilly morning breeze rifle through his sweaty hair. His pulse is still pounding from the rush of the jump. He takes a moment to breathe and let it steady, looking out over emptied-out city streets.

Even from way up here, he can see the detritus of a raucous celebration littering the gutters and sidewalks. It’s a reminder – a needed one – that he’s not the only person living through this. They’re all back. Half the city. Half the world. Displaced and unsure, maybe, but still able to celebrate the miracle of being back.

Peter’s breathing and heart steady, and he stands to plot his route back to Queens. After five long years, and somehow no time at all, Peter Parker is going home.


	2. Looking Ahead ... Looking Behind

In the next few weeks, Peter finds that his old, new life fits like a pair of shoes just half a size too small – pinching and rubbing in uncomfortable, if bearable, ways. He’ll be going about his day and everything will be fine. Then he’ll run into something so _off_ that it makes his skin itch.

The apartment where he and May lived isn’t theirs anymore. Another family lives there now. Apparently, May gave them all a good shock when she popped back into existence. He finds her eventually in one of the local elementary school lunch rooms, along with hundreds of other displaced people looking for returned loved ones.

She spends ten whole minutes just holding him close when they find each other. Then, when she finally pulls back, she hits him with a palm on the side of his head.

“Space, Peter?” she yells.

“I know.”

“Fucking space?”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, grateful that everyone else around them seems too distracted or overwhelmed to pay attention to their argument.

“From now on you ask permission for any missions not based on Earth,” May says, shaking a finger in his face.

“Well, technically, May – “

“Oh, don’t you dare give me that ‘I’m 18 now, I don’t need permission’ bullshit, Peter.”

“Okay, but – “

“I’m still in charge of you,” she says. “I will always be in charge of you.”

He can see the tears glistening in her eyes, and it breaks his heart.

“Alright,” Peter says. “You win. You’re in charge of me.”

“Damn straight,” she chokes out, and then pulls him back in for another hug.

They’re lucky enough to find a new place just a few days later. Peter can’t help but think that his Stark Industries connections have something to do with that. It’s a tiny one-bedroom with a kitchenette and a bathroom approximately the size of Peter’s locker at school. It’s fine, though. May can’t cook anyway, and Peter doesn’t sleep much anymore, so the couch suits him just fine.

He starts back at classes at Midtown, and Ned and MJ are there. That feels normal. But there are also all these new kids – kids that were just tiny middle schoolers last Peter remembers seeing them – who are now taking senior-level courses with them.

The classrooms are overcrowded and noisy, but Peter never pays much attention in class anyway. He’s already surpassed most of the current curriculum and moved onto independent study. Except in Spanish. He’s probably going to fail Spanish.

So Peter goes to school, and tries to joke with his friends like everything’s normal, then spends most of his nights out patrolling. There is a lot to do. The general upheaval after the snap was reversed has led to a crime spree. It’s sort of inevitable when you double a city’s population overnight. Resources are scarce, and people get desperate.

It’s sad, but Peter doesn’t exactly begrudge the need for his time. It feels good to keep busy, to feel like he’s of use to people. He stops muggings and thefts, he checks in with all the local mom and pop businesses, he coordinates with the shelters to get people into the right places. He’s even taken to personally escorting the girls who work at the Peppermint Rhino home after closing every night.

He usually crawls in through the living room window a couple of hours before dawn every night to sprawl out on the sofa and try to catch a couple house of sleep.

The sofa, though, is lumpy in all the wrong places, and Peter finds that sleep is hard to catch. All of their stuff from before is gone, cleared out by the landlord or the new residents of their old apartment, so they’d had to find a new couch at a thrift shop.

Peter tries not to think too much about the things they lost. The things shouldn’t bother him so much. What does rankle, lying there in the dark, is that nothing smells or sounds like home. Those aren’t even things he thought of as being distinctive until suddenly he didn’t have them.

There’s a persistent drip in the kitchen sink that Peter hasn’t managed to fix yet, and the traffic patterns are just different enough to be disorienting. May’s favorite patchouli and rosemary incense is impossible to find now, so she’s taken to lighting new clove and musk scented sticks around the apartment. Peter doesn’t say anything, but to him it smells a little too much like unwashed hipster to be pleasant. Even then, it doesn’t cover up the unfamiliar cooking smells that come from the apartment below theirs, or the slight tinge of mildew that always lingers.

He wishes he knew that the last time he had been home was the last. He would have taken a deep breath, held that scent in his lungs like he could get high from it. He worries he’s starting to forget.

Once a week, he meets Happy for breakfast before class. They go to the diner a few blocks down from Delmar’s. Peter drinks too much coffee and eats his way through half a loaf of French Toast while Happy gives him the latest updates on Mr. Stark’s recovery.

It’s Happy who tells him when the SHIELD medics release Mr. Stark and he relocates to a room in Stark Tower. He’s still weak, but he’s conscious for increasing amounts of time each day, and the burns that Wanda couldn’t erase are starting to heal, Happy says.

“You should come and visit,” he adds, taking a decisive bite of his bacon. “Boss has been asking about you, and I’m running out of excuses to give him.”

It’s nice of him to say, but Peter knows it’s nothing more than politeness. Mr. Stark has plenty of people to support him. He doesn’t need Peter poking his nose in.

“Maybe I’ll stop by sometime,” he says. Then he changes the subject and gives Happy his patrol report.

Peter doesn’t have any intention of stopping by, but more and more often he finds his patrols meandering into Manhattan, close enough that he can pick out the tower’s glowing letters. He feels like there’s a string attached to his stomach, tugging him closer and closer to the skyscraper.

One evening, he even scales its shining glass and chrome exterior, peering through windows until he finds the one on the penthouse level where Mr. Stark lays sleeping.

Guiltily, Peter spends a half hour or so just watching the man, plastered into a corner and peeking through. Staying as invisible as he can make himself. Something jittery that’s been buzzing deep in his bones all this time settles at the sight, and he sleeps a little easier that night.

Often when he comes to the tower he watches other people visiting with Mr. Stark. Nebula and Morgan are usually there, and Happy too. A few times he sees Colonel Rhodes and Dr. Banner as well.

Soon it becomes a part of Peter’s patrol routine. He goes earlier in the evening because he likes to see Mr. Stark with others, his face breaking out into a wide smile at a joke or gesticulating wildly with with his good hand while he talks. Almost as nice, though, are the times he comes by and Mr. Stark is alone in bed working, intent face lit by the glow of holoscreens while FRIDAY runs calculations for him. It makes Peter want to go in and offer a consult, to fall into the comfortable rhythm that flows when they work together.

It’s probably inevitable for the temptation to grow too great. The next time Peter finds Mr. Stark alone and asleep, he can’t help himself. He tugs at the window glass with his sticky fingers, surprised to find that it opens outward for him easily. Moving slowly, he slides through the opening and spider-walks down the wall until he can reach out and touch his feet to the ground.

The lights in the room are dim, and Peter can hear faint snoring from Mr. Stark. There’s a projection on one side of the king-sized bed where he sleeps displaying his vital readings, but with none of the accompanying beeping that would come in a hospital setting.

Quietly as possible, Peter settles into the oversized leather armchair that’s been placed by the bedside for visitors. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, to watch.

From this close, Peter can see for himself how much better Mr. Stark looks from when he saw him on the helicarrier. The bandages have been removed from his arm and side, and what was once an ashy burn is now pink, tender-looking new skin. Dr. Cho must have had a part in that. Mr. Stark’s right hand, though, is still wrapped in thick bandages.

It’s soothing, Peter finds, to sit there beside the man and watch his chest move up and down, up and down and hear his soft, huffing breath. He’s so distracted by the hypnotic power of this pattern that he doesn’t immediately notice movement in the corner of the room.

Normally, Peter would get a warning, a sort of sixth-sense tingle he’s had ever since the spider bite, when there’s anyone else in the room with him. But his extra sense – his Peter tingle as May cringingly insists on calling it – has been unreliable ever since he was undusted. It’s one of the things that makes him worry in the dark of the night, when he should be sleeping, if he came back wrong somehow. Muddled.

So he doesn’t notice the presence of another until he hears the rustling of fabric from the corner, and looks over to see a small, pale face peeking out from the entrance of a sturdily-constructed blanket fort.

“Oh, hello,” Peter says, keeping his voice soft and low. “Did I surprise you? I’m sorry.”

He retracts his mask, sweaty hair going everywhere. The little girl’s eyes go wide at this action.

“It’s okay,” he soothes, holding a hand out to her. “I really am sorry if I scared you.”

The kid – Morgan, Peter recalls – crawls carefully out of her tent and takes a tentative step toward him. It takes Peter’s breath away. He’d wondered, initially, who her mother was. Looking at her now there’s absolutely no question. She’s a perfect combination of Tony and Pepper, with Mr. Stark’s deep brown, gold-flecked eyes and Ms. Potts’ delicate upturned nose, a pattern of pale freckles running across the bridge.

Those wide eyes are on him now, bearing an uncannily familiar gleam of curiosity.

“You’re Spider-Man,” she says, a little breathlessly.

“Well, um,” Peter stutters. “Yeah, yeah I am. And you’re Morgan, right?”

Her gaze goes a little wider when he says her name, as though surprised he knows it.

“My daddy told me all your stories,” she says.

Peter’s stomach gives a lurch at that. What kind of stories could Mr. Stark be telling her? Surely anything notable would be a cautionary tale. Spider-Man and the accidental spaceship boarding. Spider-Man gets nearly drowned in a lake. Spider-Man and the ferry disaster.

The shame that washes over him as the last is so hot and powerful that he knows he must be flushing pink.

“I, um, I hope he hasn’t told you _all_ my stories,” Peter says.

Morgan replies with an enthusiastic nod.

“Yes he has! He told me about how you defeated the Vulture, and Squidward the alien, and how you saved the Washington Monument and stopped the Green Goblin from stealing all of daddy’s secret projects and – “

“Whoa,” Peter cuts her off. “Okay, you win. That’s a lot of stories.”

They also bear only a passing resemblance to the truth, as far as Peter can tell, but he supposes that makes sense. The real ones maybe aren’t the kind you tell your four-year-old.

Morgan takes a deep breath after he cuts her off. She had been speaking too quickly to allow for that before.

“You’re my favorite super hero,” she says.

“I –” Peter starts, then stops, unsure of how to respond. “Thank you?”

The kid flashes him a big grin, and then runs back to her fort.

Confused, Peter settles back into the chair. She reappears only a few seconds later, clutching a book to her chest. She tugs at his knee to demand his attention.

“Will you read me a story?” Morgan asks. “I can read it myself, but it’s nicer if someone else does it.”

She sticks her chin out stubbornly when she says the last, as though it’s something Peter might doubt. He doesn’t, as it turns out. It’s clear even from a few minutes’ acquaintance that she has inherited her father’s brains.

He nods agreement, and she unselfconsciously scales his leg and settles comfortably against his chest, handing the book over to Peter. His muscles go stiff, unused to children and feeling like he has to be especially careful. She’s tiny in a way that makes him distinctly aware of the fact he’s got super strength.

Peter runs a hand over the faded book cover – a skinny, red-scaled Smaug the Dragon guarding his horde of gold. He gets a flash of deja vu doing it.

“You know,” he tells Morgan. “I used to have a book just like this. The Hobbit was my favorite.”

He’d picked his copy out when he was eight on a trip to the thrift store. Ben had bought it for him for 25 cents. Even then, they hadn’t had a lot, so it had felt like the best treat. Holding it in his hands takes him back. There’s even a similar brownish stain on the “T” of Tolkien. Peter had spilled chocolate milk on his copy while reading, too rapt to look before grabbing his glass off the kitchen counter.

He cracks open the already severely-cracked spine to the cover page, and there it is, right underneath the bold-type title in his own elementary-school scribble: “Property of Peter Parker”.

Just below that, scrawled in blue crayon, is an addendum: “AND MORGAN H. STARK”.

Peter’s fingers tremble, shaking the page he was about to turn.

“I know it’s really yours,” Morgan says. “But daddy said I could read it if I was really careful with it. I haven’t ripped it or anything. Is it okay?”

Peter’s throat is tight, and he can hear his heartbeat thudding in his eardrums. Everything he and May owned before is gone. The computers he spent hours rebuilding, the figurines he collected, the posters on his walls and all of the books on his shelves. All of his clothes are new – ill-fitting because they haven’t been worn-in properly yet. He’s taken to stopping by the Goodwill in his old neighborhood sometimes, thinking that maybe the new residents of their apartment donated some of it, that something will pop up. Nothing ever has.

He thought it was all gone. Until now. Somehow, Morgan has his book. It feels like finding the hidden Easter egg in a video game and like finding buried treasure rolled up into one.

“It’s fine,” Peter tells Morgan, pulling himself together so he doesn’t scare her. “I’m just glad to see it again. Now, where did you leave off reading?”

“Trolls,” Morgan tells him conspiratorially, flipping to the proper page and showing him where to start.

Peter reads to her all about the trolls Bert, Bill and Tom as they plot how to eat a hobbit and several dwarves. He gives each of the trolls a different ridiculous voice, to Morgan’s clear delight. She’s a responsive audience, gripping his arm when it seems like Bilbo might get squashed into jelly and sighing in relief when Gandalf returns.

Peter reads:

_“’Where did you go to, if I may ask?’ said Thorin to Gandalf as they rode along._

_‘To look ahead,’ said he._

_‘And what brought you back in the nick of time?’”_

“Looking behind.”

Peter startles at the unexpected voice. He looks up to find Mr. Stark looking at him. His eyes crinkle at the corners as he gives Peter a smile. Belatedly, Peter realizes he’s been doing a pretty spot-on impression of Dr. Strange’s clipped monotone for Gandalf, and Mr. Stark had followed his lead. A hysterical bubble of laughter breaks from his chest.

“Hey kid,” he says. “Long time, no see.”

Self-consciously, Peter pulls Morgan in a little, resting his chin on her head. She wriggles in willingly.

“Well, you’re a busy man,” Peter says. “I didn’t want to interrupt any critical business.”

“Yes, I’m very busy and important,” Mr. Stark gestures at the wide expanse of his bed. “But tell me, you’ve been outside recently. How is out there? They still got that fresh air? Is it as good as I remember, or am I romanticizing?”

“It’s pretty great,” Peter concedes. “Getting a little stir-crazy, sir?”

“They won’t let me out of bed, Pete,” Mr. Stark says. “There’s a bird that sits outside my window and mocks me daily. I’m being mocked.”

“I’m sure you’ll be flying again in no time, Mr. Stark.”

“I have always been a fly before you can walk guy. Legs aren’t so steady right now, but …”

“Oh no.”

“Actually, with the stabilizers, and with FRIDAY mostly running the show it might be easier to try – “

“No,” Peter says forcefully. “Please, put that gleam in your eye away before someone finds out it was my idea and murders me in my sleep.”

By someone he obviously means Nebula, but that doesn’t need to be said. The wicked glint of experimentation fades a little in Mr. Stark’s eyes, and Peter misses it almost immediately. When he’s in that zone, Tony becomes a force of nature unto himself. One of Peter’s favorite things is to be swept along with that powerful force. The man is, however, still recovering from being burned from the inside out, and Peter isn’t sure that his own heart could take another Tony Stark near-death special just now. Even looking at him there in bed with his bandage and his monitors makes Peter feel burned-out hollow.

“Fine,” Mr. Stark is saying, sulkily. “You’re all spoil sports.”

“I’m comfortable with that,” Peter shoots back.

Mr. Stark gives him a bright smile, then moves to carefully readjust his body so he’s sitting up.

“So I see you met the boss there,” he says to Peter. “Sorry I conked out on you during Monopoly, babydoll.”

“That’s okay, daddy,” Morgan says. “You were losing anyway.”

Peter stifles a giggle in the crown of Morgan’s head.

“Sharper than a serpent’s tooth …” Mr. Stark mutters.

“Spider-Man was reading me a story,” Morgan informs him, putting the emphasis on Peter’s title.

“Well, that was very nice of him. Did you say thank you?”

Morgan shuffles around so she can look into Peter’s face.

“Thank you for the story,” she says politely. “I liked your funny voices.”

“Anytime, kiddo,” Peter replies.

He’s closed the paperback and is rotating it slowly in his hands.

“Um, Mr. Stark?” he asks. “Could you tell me where you found this book? It’s just, I think it used to be mine, and all our stuff kind of got thrown out after … Well, after. So if there’s anything else that made it through, I’d love to find it.”

He finishes with a little shrug, knowing it’s a vain hope. Finding just this one thing was a brilliant coup. Anything else would be pressing his decidedly rotten luck.

“Shit, Pete …” Mr. Stark says.

“Shit!” Morgan echoes enthusiastically.

“Hey, Morgan H. Stark, what did we say?” Tony scolds.

Morgan sighs.

“That’s a daddy-only word, and I’m not allowed to use it.”

“That’s right. Now why don’t you go find Blue and check on dinner.”

“But I want to talk to Spider-Man,” she whines, wiggling around so she can wrap her arms around Peter’s torso. He can’t help but squeeze back, aware it’s a ploy, but charmed despite himself.

“Now,” Mr. Stark says decisively, just a hint of ice in his voice.

“Fine,” she says, slipping out of Peter’s arms and off his lap.

“Don’t leave without saying goodbye,” she cautions Peter.

“I promise,” he says.

Mr. Stark waits until she’s closed the door behind her to speak.

“Sorry, kid,” he says. “She’s a little star-struck, but I don’t like to talk about snap-related stuff around her.”

Peter nods, eyebrows furrowing together. He’s not fond of snap-related talk either, and a part of him wants to suggest they leave it for another time. It’s just that Mr. Stark really seems like there’s something he wants to get off his chest. The man winces as he readjusts in bed.

“What’s going on, Mr. Stark?” he asks.

“I just wanted to apologize, I guess. I should have thought about it before now, but my brain’s been a little fuzzy from Wanda’s hocus pocus, and I fall asleep all the time. Mid-conversation sometimes. Makes me feel senile.”

“It’s just going to take time,” Peter tries to reassure. He reaches out for Mr. Stark’s hand, but it’s his bandaged one, so he ends up just laying his palm on the cool silk sheets.

“I know, but I’ve never been too great at the whole patience thing.”

Mr. Stark stops, rubbing at his face.

“That’s not actually what I meant to say. I meant to say I’m sorry I didn’t send your stuff over to you right away. I should have though about it.”

“My stuff?” Peter asks, confused.

Mr. Stark nods.

“After Thanos, when Nebula and I got back to Earth, I had Happy pack up everything in your apartment.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t creepy,” Mr. Stark says, which is a confusing statement. “I didn’t, like, go through all your shit or read your diary or anything.”

“I don’t have a diary,” Peter says, brain struggling to process what he’s being told.

“I know,” Mr. Stark says. “I might have looked for one.”

“But you didn’t go through my shit or anything.”

He’s teasing, really. It’s not like Mr. Stark is a stranger to his embarrassing, nerdy side. It hardly seems to matter if the man saw his Legos or his Iron Man posters.

“I didn’t go through _all_ of it,” Mr. Stark clarifies. “And clearly I let Morgan read some of your books. She likes them, and it gave me an excuse to tell her all about you, so …”

“Why?” Peter cuts Mr. Stark off.

“She would ask. In case you haven’t heard it a hundred times already, Spider-Man is her favorite.”

“No,” Peter says, struggling to focus down.

He’s forgotten the way conversations with Mr. Stark can devolve into journeys down twisting rabbit holes. Normally he enjoys it, but he’s trying to get at something just now.

“No, why did you keep my stuff at all? You could have given it away, or just let it get tossed out when the landlord rented our place out. I’m sure you had a lot of things on your plate.”

“Well, Pete, I thought you might want it,” Mr. Stark says.

His tone is frazzled, and he’s running a hand agitatedly through his hair, tugging when he gets to the ends. It exacerbates his already extreme bedhead, making him look soft and haloed.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter prompts, cautiously.

“I know it seems like I took my sweet time, but I never stopped believing that I’d get you back,” he says, voice just above a whisper. “I swear, I never stopped trying.”

The expression on his face, when he looks at Peter, is open and raw. Peter feels like all the breath has been knocked out of his body. He tries to scrape words together, to say anything.

“I—” He says, after far too long a pause.

The sound of someone’s throat clearing mercifully stops him from having to finish the thought.

Both he and Mr. Stark turn sharply to see Nebula leaning against the door jamb, Morgan beside her carefully balancing a tray in her little hands.

“Dinner’s ready,” Nebula says, bringing up a hand to steady the tray when Morgan almost lets it tip. She doesn’t remove her burning gaze from Peter. Well, looks like she hasn’t warmed to him yet.

“I should go,” he says, standing up quickly

Nebula has to gracefully sweep the tray from Morgan’s hands when she rushes forward.

“But I was gonna ask you to tell me about the lizard man,” she says, hugging Peter’s knees.

Peter reaches down and ruffles her hair, eliciting an ineffective scowl.

“Some other time, kiddo,” he says.

“You could stay for dinner,” Mr. Stark offers. “I’m sure there’s plenty.”

“I did not plan for guests,” Nebula insists almost at the same moment.

Peter holds his hands up to stop them both. He’s feeling overwhelmed right now, anyway. He needs to swing and to think.

“Don’t want to interrupt family time,” he says. “And besides, I need to get back to patrol.”

He’s already at the window, about to slip out when Mr. Stark calls out after him.

“Pete!”

Peter turns his head back.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Tony says. “Please.”

Peter gives a curt nod and then heads out the window and into the night, ignoring the twin aches in his throat and his chest.

*

The soup Nebula is stirring has turned a discomfiting gray color. Somehow, everything she tries to make turns the same unappetizing shade. Cooking was never a skill she had found much use for, but cooking for a Terran palate complicates things even further.

Her father’s alterations have left Nebula’s taste buds muted, a side effect she hardly noticed until, assisting Tony in making pasta sauce one evening, she had taken his instructions to add chili powder “to taste” literally. She’d found the resulting sauce quite pleasing, but Tony’s taste buds had needed a week to recover from the burns.

That’s not exactly the sort of thing you want to give an invalid, so she’s here standing over a pot of gray soup that is now starting to congeal alarmingly. With a sigh, she sets the entire pot aside to deal with later, giving it one final warning jab with her wooden spoon for good measure. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that it could gain sentience and decide to explore. Then she asks FRIDAY to order take-out.

She’s just collapsed down into the sofa in the living room to wait when a mechanism in her left eye gives a few grinding clicks, and a translucent image stutters into life in front of her. It takes a few moments for it to coalesce. When it does, Nebula’s shocked to see a miniature Gamora before her.

It has been nearly a month since she last saw her sister, face contorted into a battle cry as she slid her sword across the throat of one of Thanos’ minions. Gamora had fled on her own sometime after the battle, not even bothering to bid Nebula a farewell. The only assurances she had that her sister wasn’t dead were the lack of body found in the rubble of the destroyed compound and a certainty that, if the worst were to happen, she would feel it instantly.

The last thing she expected is for Gamora to reach out like this, even if she has cloaked the origin of her transmission. She looks good. She looks relaxed, lounging on the bridge of what appears to be a small ship, boots propped up on the corner of a messy command table. Nebula would think her long at ease were it not for the spatter of fresh crimson blood across one sharp cheekbone. It creates a striking contrast against her luminous viridian skin. the combination reminds Nebula of deep midwinter up in the Adirondacks – icy, deadly, beautiful.

“Sister,” Gamora greets her. “You look well.”

“And you look as though you’ve been busy,” Nebula replies. No sense in telling her she looks well. She always does, and she knows it.

Gamora’s answering smile is sharp and wide enough to show her incisors.

“I’ve been having luck hunting,” she says, reaching up to rub at the blood on her face with a thumb before swiping the digit with her tongue.

Nebula hates the twisting knots the action creates in her stomach, but she schools her face carefully to give none of it away.

“What sort of game are you finding?” she asks instead, curious as to how Gamora has been spending her time.

“I’m hunting down the last of Thanos’ acolytes,” she says. “Most of them died on Terra, but there are still a small number who did not make it to the battle. Best to destroy the remaining weeds now, so they do not take root again.”

“Do you have need of me?” Nebula asks, hand going unconsciously to the holster at her side, though the gun has been carefully stowed away, as it always is these days when she is not headed into battle. It is safer, with a child in the house.

Gamora laughs at that, and the sound feels like a slap, shocking even if expected.

“No,” she says. “This fight is mine, sister. I just wanted to see how you faired. You are still on Terra?”

“Yes,” Nebula nods. “I have responsibilities. But if you ever need – “

“Whoa.”

Nebula’s head whips away from the image of her sister to the doorway where Morgan stands with mouth agape.

“Is that one of your friends, Nebula?” she asks, coming forward and circling the hologram. “Is she on a spaceship? Can I have a ride on your spaceship? I wouldn’t press any buttons.”

Nebula reaches out for her and pulls the girl onto the cushion beside her, hushing her with a sharp tsk.

Naturally, it doesn’t work. Morgan continues to address questions to Gamora.

“Are you green because of chlorophyll?” she asks. “Daddy taught me all about why plants are green. Are you part plant? Is it hard to get enough sunlight in space?”

“Silence, little gargoyle,” Nebula says, using an endearment she picked up from Rocket.

She tugs gently at the ends of Morgan’s hair before allowing her hand to rest on the girl’s breastbone, just below her neck. Nebula’s about to repeat the lecture that she and Tony have given multiple times about rude questions, but before she can she catches sight of Gamora’s face from the corner of her eye. Her skin has gone a sickly olive, and her expression is full of fear.

“Nebula,” she rasps, reaching a hand out as though she might reach through the ether. “Please. Please don’t hurt her.”

The truth falls over Nebula slowly, how it must appear to her sister – her mechanical hand so close to a child’s throat. If she squeezed with even a fraction of her strength, it would be over in an instant. The horror of her own capability is dwarfed only by the thought that, just a few years ago, it would have taken nothing more than a nod from her father to make her squeeze.

Something curdles inside her. What can she say? _I would never … How can you think I would …_ There is no rejoinder. The thing Nebula hates most about Gamora is that, even when she sees only the worst in her, everything she sees is true.

Beside her, Morgan’s face is contorting in a grimace of confusion. That’s what shakes Nebula out of her statute-like stare. Even if everything is awful and tainted, none of that should touch Morgan. Ever.

“Goodbye, sister,” she says, blinking purposefully to clear the hologram, cutting off Gamora’s cries of protest in a buzz of static.

“Who was that lady?” Morgan asks softly, face pressed close to her shoulder.

“An old friend,” Nebula replies.

Morgan makes a face at that.

“She didn’t seem very friendly,” she replies.

“No,” Nebula agrees. “No, she usually isn’t. Come on, little gargoyle. Dinner should be here soon.”

*

Tony doesn’t know why he tells the lie. He doesn’t have to. The kid would accept any explanation Tony gave him for keeping all his things, but the truth isn’t something he can look at directly right now.

“I never stopped believing,” he tells Peter. And “I never stopped trying.”

Tony desperately wants those things to be true. And isn’t it kinder, after all, if Peter thinks he never gave up than if he knows the reality? That Tony only kept all those things – the books, the clothes, the detritus of a life buried in his desk drawers and in the recesses of his shelves – as a memorial to the boy he couldn’t save.

Initially, of course he’d believed he could save them all. Kill Thanos, reverse the snap, make it all right. He’d had to believe, or he couldn’t have gone on living. But seeing the Titan lose his head, and how it amounted to nothing, was a breaking point.

He was broken, and it had taken years, the birth of his daughter, and a lot of support from Nebula to be anything but a shell. If she hadn’t taken them on like lost kittens after Pepper left, Tony honestly doesn’t know what would have become of them both.

Getting Peter back had been like feeling one more piece of himself slotting back into place. And yet, there’s still that icy crack that won’t seal completely shut. Because what if he hadn’t?

What if Natasha, Scott and Steve had never come to him spouting crazy time travel theories? Would he ever have made an effort again? Would he still be living in a Peter Parker-less world without ever realizing it could be different? It’s horrifying to think, but it was so close to true.

In the immediate aftermath of his resurrection, Tony had been too high on endorphins and painkillers to feel anything other than joy. What could possibly trouble him when he and Peter were both whole and alive? It had been a surprisingly short time, though, before guilt started creeping in. Really, a near-death high should last longer.

It doesn’t help things that the kid seems to be avoiding him now, almost as though he senses Tony’s betrayal. Or maybe it’s just a return to the natural order of things. Relationships never really balance, do they? There’s always someone who wants it more. The thought should be more comforting than it is.

When Nebula comes back into the room after putting Morgan to bed, looking like a funeral dirge made flesh, he’s grateful for the distraction from his own dark thoughts.

“She go down okay?” he asks.

“We negotiated down to two bedtime stories,” Nebula says. “Keep your guard up, though. She seems restless.”

“Too much excitement today.”

“Hmm,” she nods, going over to fiddle with the blinds.

“Hey, Blue?” Tony calls, making her turn away from her own reflection in the dark window. “You doin’ okay?”

She gives him a flat look. Yeah, alright, that was clearly never going to work. Neb’s the type of person you have to come at from an angle to get at anything real.

“You wanna grab the cards?” he says instead. “Adding to my win tally might make me feel a little better.”

“If you like,” she says, inclining her head towards him. “But I am up by 42 games. I do not think you can catch me at this point.”

“Ooh, starting the trash talk early, Smurfette.”

“I have told you I do not understand that reference …”

“I would introduce you, but honestly it requires a lot of mushrooms to truly _understand.”_

“You don’t eat mushrooms.”

“Bad trip in my early 20s.”

Nebula narrows her eyes at him.

“You know I hate double meanings.”

Tony shrugs at her, slightly chastised.

“Sorry, Blue.”

She rolls her dark eyes at him, then settles herself at the foot of the bed and shuffles the cards. The game they play most often, and that, yes, Nebula is winning 177 games to Tony’s 135, is a modified version of Bullshit – every third card discarded so card counting is impossible and with the added incentive of betting with quarters.

“Two aces,” he says, laying his cards face down on the comforter between them.

Nebula’s eyes bore into his, but she says nothing, just lays her own cards down.

“Three twos.”

“One three,” Tony counters. “And you know you’re gonna tell me eventually.”

“No fours,” Nebula says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “And there is nothing to tell.”

“One five,” Tony says, laying a six down, but Nebula doesn’t catch his lie. She distracted. _Friendship and strategy. That seems about right,_ he thinks. “I’m not gonna let it go.”

“My sister called,” Nebula sighs after an extended silent standoff.

“Fuck.”

“Precisely.”

The play is slow and intermittent as Nebula unfolds the whole story. Tony knew from the other stories Neb has told him that Gamora is a pill, but this is another level. Nebula has never needed his protection physically, but this particular emotional ground is still tender, and it makes Tony want to wrap her up in a blanket and hold her tight. He still might if she keeps giving him those big eyes.

He clears his throat when she seems to run out of steam talking.

“You know that’s not really _your_ Gamora, right?” he says.

“Gamora is always herself.”

“No, Blue, really. She’s not. She’s the her from years ago, right? She hasn’t seen very much of the current Nebula. So whatever she thinks, that’s not on you. She missed a lot. It’s just going to take her a while to catch up.”

“Are you really just going to tell me not to take it personally?” she asks, voice rough with emotion.

“No,” Tony says. “All I’m saying is that, unless she’s a very big idiot, she’ll come around with time.”

“Most people are idiots,” Nebula grumbles, but her shoulders are a little straighter, lighter maybe.

“Preaching to the choir,” Tony says, then he smiles wide and places a stack of cards on their growing pile. “Four tens.”

“You lie,” Nebula hisses at him.

“Uh-uh, Blue. That’s not how you play the game. You gonna play for real, accuse me properly.”

Their eyes lock, and Nebula’s lips twitch at his exaggerated smolder.

“What do we say?” Tony prompts.

“Bull. Shit.” Nebula intones. 

“How much you wanna bet?

By the end of the night, she’s up by 47 games, and Tony is a content loser.

*

Peter sees the box as soon as he crawls in through the living room window. It’s sitting in the middle of the coffee table, “Peter’s Room” scrawled across the top in Mr. Stark’s spiky handwriting.

It’s only been a day since his visit to the tower, and Peter hadn’t been expecting anything to arrive so soon. He mostly expected for Mr. Stark to forget all about it, if he’s being honest.

Happy must have dropped the box off earlier this evening. By now, it must be two in the morning, and Peter’s muscles are sore from a busy patrol. He sits, retracts his mask, and pulls the box forward.

A note falls out when he unfolds the top.

_Pete,_

_Just a few mementos here. You’ll have to come by the cabin someday soon to sort through the rest of the boxes. Happy convinced me that they all wouldn’t fit in your new place. In the meantime, I hope this helps._

_-T.S._

He has to take a deep breath before he’s prepared to look into the depths of the box.

At the top are his books. It’s a small collection of well-used paperbacks by Adams, Tolkien, Pratchett, Le Guin. They represent the rattiest and most frequently read of his collection. Peter thumbs through a few. He sets The Hobbit aside to return to Morgan. It seems only fair. She can’t possibly have finished it, and he’s always hated leaving a story untold.

Beneath the books are a few of his old Star Wars action figures including Han Solo and a little R2-D2. They’re the ones he kept displayed on his nightstand. There are a few other odds and ends from his nightstand drawer, including an old tamagotchi he’d scavenged from a dumpster and reprogrammed as a pet spider he could feed webbed-up bad guys to. May had always found it grotesque, but Mr. Stark had been impressed by his coding when Peter had shown him. 

He finds a tied-up bundle of snapshots of him, Ned and MJ hanging out on the Coney Island boardwalk one weekend, as well as a few framed photos – one of his Mom and Dad holding him when he was just a bundled baby, another of him, Ben and May at one of his middle school science fairs and one he and Mr. Stark had taken when they’d decided to make his fake internship a real one – certificate turned upside down, goofy grins on both their faces. Peter runs a thumb over Mr. Stark’s face and ignores the way his stomach churns.

The lot rests on a nest of fabric which Peter realizes, when he pulls on a piece, is a collection of his novelty t-shirts. The first one he pulls out is faded blue with a cartoon dinosaur on it under the words “Velociraptor = Distanceraptor/Timeraptor.”

It only takes moments for Peter to retract his suit and slip the shirt over his head. The cotton is soft from years of wear, clinging perfectly to his body.

Bringing the material up to his nose, Peter inhales. It’s not a scent he’d ever thought he’d smell again – patchouli and rosemary, lemon-scented wax from the ancient hardwood floors of their old apartment, still a hint of cedar from the inside of his dresser drawer. Beneath it all, there’s a slightly discordant note, like the scent of rain, but it’s faint enough to ignore.

Lying back on the couch, Peter curls into a ball, buries his nose in the shirt collar and falls asleep, for the first time in what feels like years, to the scent of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who left feedback on chapter one. It's been super encouraging.
> 
> Apologies if this chapter veers a little too heavily into the mopey nostalgia. Quarantining away from family has my nostalgia-adjacent emotions dialed up to 11, and this is apparently where it's all coming out. We should get to a little more action in chapter three.


	3. A Sword Instead of a Walking Stick

Peter jiggles his leg nervously and leans his head back against the crumbling vinyl seat of the taxi. The driver is giving him an unpleasantly familiar look via the rearview mirror. Peter’s received it in comic book shops and electronics stores across the city. The _Do you really have enough money to pay for this_ glare.

He does, as it turns out. Peter started his journey with a whole semester’s worth of wages from working at Delmar’s plus a few twenties May shoved into his hand on the way out the door that she said was for souvenirs.

“Buy yourself something fun!” she called at him down the hall. “A tchotchke!”

“Do people still say tchotchke?” he asked, hoisting his backpack up a little higher on his shoulder. “Maybe just really, really old people.”

“Fine,” she’d said with a dramatic wave of her hand. “Get out of here and good riddance, you little punk.”

“Love you too, May.”

So. Peter can pay for the taxi ride. He just wasn’t planning on spending quite so much of his savings on it. He watches the meter tick up and up, chewing on a thumbnail as the green blur of forest whizzes by through the window.

He’d taken a bus as far north as Lake George. It was a sweaty, smelly four-hour journey from the city. From there, he’d hailed a cab to take him west into the mountains. He probably should have swung his way out. It would have been quicker. But he got worried that a hiker or someone might spot him and make too much of it. Peter doesn’t want to become a creepy urban legend or feature on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. The Spider Monster of the Adirondacks. He can just see it.

The road meanders through dense forest and an occasional blip of a town. Maybe this whole idea is stupid, Peter thinks. It’s going to be a miserable trip back if Mr. Stark isn’t happy to see him.

“You sure you wanna go all the way out here, pal?” The driver asks in his broad upstate accent. “Nothing much out this way.”

“I’m sure,” Peter says, trusting to the directions he’d managed to finagle out of FRIDAY. She wouldn’t lie to him.

It had been a shock to stop by the penthouse and find it empty but for FRIDAY, who greeted him cheerily. It stung a surprising amount that Mr. Stark hadn’t mentioned his relocation to his cabin upstate before he left.

They had started texting each other intermittently after Peter’s initial visit to the tower. Peter sent him stories of funny things he sees on patrol, providing regular updates on the years-long feud between the churro lady and the guy who sells halo-halo over corner ownership. The churro lady is currently winning. She’s ruthless.

Mr. Stark, in return, sent Peter cute animal gifs and updates on his physical therapy. He’d received a triumphant “King of the Mountain!” text the first time Mr. Stark managed to climb a flight of stairs by himself.

He’d started visiting the tower at least once a week, reading Morgan stories, talking shop with Mr. Stark and avoiding Nebula whenever possible. It started to feel normal. A little bubble of normal just when Peter’s life was hurtling at him faster than he felt like he could take – college applications, finals and graduation all piling on in one panicky mass.

But then he found out Mr. Stark had moved without saying a word, and the bubble popped. Oh well. Peter’s sort of used to having nice things ripped away from him. He doubled down on school work and patrol, and looked forward to the end of high school.

The texting continued, but Peter became increasingly aware of how little they talked of anything of consequence. He didn’t mention it to Mr. Stark when he got his acceptance letter from MIT, but he assumed the man knew from the size and extravagance of the scholarship offer that came with it.

Peter accepted, and he and May ordered Thai to celebrate.

The question of what to do with his summer hung heavy over him. Ned and MJ kept pestering him to come on the school’s end-of-year European study abroad trip, but he honestly couldn’t picture playing tourist so soon after everything. It seems impolite to go and gawp at places that have to still be recovering from the snap and its aftermath. He knows he feels a burn of resentment in his gut every time he notices a gaggle of tragedy tourists on the streets during a patrol.

Plus, there’s no way he and May can afford it. Not with Cambridge housing prices the way they are.

Peter and MJ had a long, heated debate about it while Ned tried to agree with both of them in order to make peace. It’s fine. They sealed a truce over fro-yo, but Peter isn’t going to Europe and Ned and MJ are. Peter figured he’d just spend his summer in the city, picking up extra shifts at the deli and patrolling as much as possible.

May had put her foot down, though, after he got shot.

It wasn’t as dramatic as it sounded. The bullet barely grazed him, and he caught the guy who did it. But after a rather tear-filled confrontation, Peter had agreed to take a break from patrolling. He had been overdoing it, trying to make up for lost time and prove himself useful, but he couldn’t have kept going the same way without a bigger screw up, and he knew it.

He had a chat with the Hell’s Kitchen Devil and asked him to look in on Queens for a couple months. He’d been terse, but willing.

The idea of visiting Mr. Stark upstate had been taking root in the back of his mind as soon as he’d learned the man had left, if he’s being honest. Just like before, Peter knows that he’s fine, but can hardly resist the urge to just … check. He tries not to examine it too closely.

He told May that he was invited, which was kind of true at least. Mr. Stark had written that Peter should come by the cabin sometime in his note all those months ago, after all. Peter filled his backpack with essentials and bought a bus ticket.

The taxi rolls to a stop, and Peter clambers out, slinging his backpack over one shoulder and allowing his head to crane up, up, up to the tops of the tall pines. It’s more green than Peter’s ever seen all at once in his life. Nestled in against the wall of green is a wrought iron gate connected to a high, barb-wired topped fence designed to blend in with the forest. Peter can’t tell how far it extends on each side, but he can’t pick out the end.

He double-checks the GPS o his phone, and sure enough, this is the address FRIDAY gave him. He pays the driver and waves him off despite the look of concern plastered on the man’s face. When the vehicle is gone from sight, Peter turns to face the gate. He rattles it with not much hope, finding it locked.

He could easily bend the bars, but that seems a little rude. He could also text Mr. Stark and ask to be let in, but then he’ll have to explain himself. Illogically, he wants to put that off for as long as possible.

Instead, Peter slips the other backpack strap over his shoulder so it’s secure and takes a hold of the cold metal.

“Okay, so we’re doing this,” he mutters to himself, and then he climbs the gate and drops down on the other side. It takes hardly any effort at all.

There’s an asphalt driveway that snakes its way through the woods, and Peter follows it, head tilted up to take in the gently swaying tops of the trees. It’s cooler here than it had been in the city, a soft breeze wicking the sweat from his forehead. Peter listens to the quiet shush of the branches layered with birds calling and the chittering of squirrels, and lets himself just breath.

He’ll always be a creature of the city, but this is nice. Peaceful. Peter starts to think that maybe everything will be alright.

If he were paying attention, he probably would have sensed the knife before it cut through the air right in front of his face – a flash of metal followed by a heavy thud as it embeds itself into the bark of a tree just beyond him.

Peter’s pulse spikes, and he has just enough time to brace himself before a blur of a figure barrels into him and presses him up against the same tree trunk. The impact knocks the breath from his body, and when he manages to take a gulp of air and open his eyes, Nebula has one arm braced against his chest to keep him still and her dagger held to his throat – a cold pin prick.

For a moment their faces are pressed close together, ragged breaths mixing. Nebula’s face is contorted in anger, a violet flush working its way up her neck and into her cheeks. Peter could overpower her. He knows he’s stronger. The question is whether he’s fast enough, if he can overpower her before she lets her blade sink deeper.

Then they’re both distracted by a jet-like rumble and the clang of metal hitting asphalt. Peter jerks his eyes away from Nebula’s face, back to the road where the Iron Man suit has landed dramatically on one knee. The armor retracts from Mr. Stark’s face, revealing a slightly green complexion. He sucks in an unsteady breath.

“Nebula, no!” he shouts, holding a gauntleted hand out to her.

Her lip curls up into a snarl, but she pulls the dagger away sharply and rises to her feet, stomping over to help Mr. Stark stand. Peter slumps against the tree, releasing a shaky sigh.

“He breached the perimeter,” she mutters as she hauls a wheezing Mr. Stark to his feet. “You should have let me handle it.”

“Yeah, well,” Mr. Stark says between coughs. “Your way of handling things can be a little more stabby than I’d prefer.”

He leans on Nebula’s shoulder, armor clanking.

“Hey, Pete,” he says with a little wave. “Was I expecting you? I’m real bad at keeping track of dates, but I would have sent a car. Or at least unlocked the gate.”

Peter stumbles up to standing, and runs a hand sheepishly through his hair.

“Surprise?” he says.

Peter keeps expecting Mr. Stark to ask him to explain why he’s there, but he doesn’t. He retracts the Iron Man armor back into its casing, mutters “Fuck, I was not ready for that,” then throws an arm around Peter’s shoulders. It’s partially in greeting and partially, Peter suspects, for the support.

He leans into the contact regardless, wrapping a tentative arm around Mr. Stark’s waist, his hand resting lightly on one hip.

They meander up the drive, with Mr. Stark pointing out the bat boxes that they’ve placed in the upper reaches of the trees, the spots where you can see the lake sparkling in the sun through the forest cover. When the trees open up, they reveal a clearing. A large wood-sided cabin with a copper roof is set beside a peaceful lakefront rimmed with softly rolling mountains. A dock stretches lazily out into the water. Peter can see a barn beyond the cabin, a few other buildings behind that, painted forest green to blend in with the surroundings. It’s idyllic.

“Huh,” he says, taking it in.

“Whaddya think?” Mr. Stark asks, nudging him.

“It’s beautiful,” Peter says. “I just never expected you to go for something so … rustic.”

“Eh, the glass and chrome look doesn’t exactly blend,” Mr. Stark says. “Trust me, I didn’t skimp on the bells and whistles. There’s still a fully equipped lab for you to play around in. I have all the latest toys.”

“I’ll look forward to those,” Peter says, still at a loss.

He feels something bump into his leg and looks down to see a fuzzy head butting up against his thigh.

“Wha-“

“Ah,” Mr. Stark says. “That’s Gerald the alpaca, resident menace. You’ve gotta watch him. He’s friendly enough, but he’ll literally eat anything.”

Sure enough, Gerald has latched onto the hem of Peter’s t-shirt and is attempting to chew it. He pats the top of the alpaca’s fluffy head and extricates the fabric from his mouth.

“That’s not food, Geraldo,” Mr. Stark says, scolding.

As they reach the driveway, he seems a little stronger on his feet and they break apart. Peter can still feel the warm line of him against his side, and his stomach tightens. Mr. Stark leads the way up the steps of the cabin to the front porch, turning to flash Peter a wink after he’s scaled them. Then he swings the front door open and ushers Peter through.

Inside, the cabin is warm with golden-hour light flooding in and soaking against the wood paneling. In the open living room, Morgan is standing up on an overstuffed leather couch, wrapping a hot pink feathered boa around the spindly neck of Dum-E while U stands by looking despondent in a sparkly tiara.

She looks up guiltily when the door creaks open, but her face transforms into a splitting smile when she sees who it is.

“Peter!” she cries out, hopping down with a thump from the cushion and sprinting over so that she knocks directly into his knees and wraps her arm around them.

“I missed you,” she says, looking up at him with a grin. “Daddy doesn’t know how to do Gollum’s voice, and he wouldn’t let me call you to do it.”

She pouts a little when she says the last, and Peter crouches down to give her a proper hug.

“You should definitely have called me to do Gollum,” he says. “He’s my favorite. And I missed you too, kiddo.”

He feels something poking at the small of his back and turns to find that the bots have wheeled around to greet him.

“Hi guys,” he says, scratching at one of Dum-E’s hydraulic gaskets while U gives an upset whistle at being ignored.

Peter pats at the base of his arm and U chirrups more happily. He really is pleased to see them. It’s hard not to grow attached to the good-natured bots when they’ve so clearly developed personalities.

“Have you been good while I was gone?” he coos at them.

“They’re not puppies,” Mr. Stark says, pulling a couple of bottles of water from the refrigerator and handing one to Peter.

“Maybe not,” Peter says, taking the drink gratefully. “But they’re still very good boys.”

Mr. Stark blusters with mock indignation, but Peter doesn’t believe it. He’s just as attached to them, if more stoic about it.

“Peter, do you want to see my tent?” Morgan is saying, tugging at his arm. “Sometimes when Nebula stays with me I get to sleep in it. And I’m learning all the constellations. Do you know all the constellations?”

“You’re one up on me there,” Peter says, glancing over at Nebula, who has settled at the kitchen island, watching him closely.

Mr. Stark intercedes just as Morgan is pulling him out the door, putting one hand on the little girl’s shoulder to stop her.

“Peter can see your tent later, babydoll,” he says. “Right now we’re going to let him get settled. It’s a long trip up here.”

“Fine,” Morgan sighs dramatically.

“Your room’s on the top floor,” Mr. Stark tells him, nodding toward the staircase. “Clean sheets on the bed. Dinner at seven?”

“Uh,” Peter stutters, a little overwhelmed by the completeness of his welcome. “Sure?”

“Great,” Mr. Stark says, shooing him toward the stairs. “I’m grilling steaks.”

“’Kay,” Peter replies faintly, heading up the stairs. It’s two flights up to the top of the house, where he finds an attic room with a sloping ceiling and a large window overlooking the vista of water and mountains. It feels cozy without being claustrophobic.

Peter tosses his backpack onto the bed with its plaid-patterned comforter and pushes open the window to let breeze freshen the room up. _Your room,_ Mr. Stark had said, though he surely meant _guest room_. Right?

Except there’s a charging station that looks like a perfect fit for his web slingers on the bedside table, and an afghan knotted in an abstract spider web design at the foot of the bed, even though it’s clear Mr. Stark hadn’t been prepared for his visit. Peter isn’t sure what to make of it.

It still feels weird that he hasn’t been grilled on his sudden appearance, like he has to keep bracing himself for the other shoe to drop. He knows Nebula is dying to interrogate him, but Mr. Stark seems deeply unconcerned, if welcoming. Peter’s not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed by his indifference.

He pokes around in the room for a few minutes, finding a closet and then an en-suite bathroom with a pedestal sink and claw-footed tub, and opts to wash the journey off himself instead of trying to untangle the knot of how he’s feeling right now.

*

The swing of her axe is a reliably soothing motion. Nebula likes the weightless sensation when the swing reaches its apex, and the blade slices downward carried by its own momentum. She tends her steel well, so it slices through the logs like a hot knife through butter, except with a more satisfying crack.

What she would like to do instead is crack the insect child’s skull. But she keeps on chopping wood because she is a mature adult being who need not stoop to violence to solve her problems. Is it bad to regret her own personal growth?

She had been quietly pleased to see the back of Peter Parker for the last time when they left the city. Nebula had suggested it, but Tony had readily agreed. They both wanted to go home, and there was no denying the cabin was a better place to convalesce.

The point is, she hasn’t had to think about the boy at all for weeks and now here he is, sticking his nose in, looking wounded and vulnerable when she was only trying to protect their territory. If his intentions were good, then why was he sneaking?

Nebula still hasn’t settled completely from the blare of the perimeter alarm going off. Tony had received so many threats, so much vitriol after the snap from people who thought the Avengers hadn’t done enough to prevent it. They were grieving and angry, and it made the sanctuary of the cabin all the more necessary. So few people even know this place exists, and the locals politely pretend not to recognize Tony or notice Nebula’s complexion when they have to go into town to pick up supplies.

But even with that closed-off circle of protection, there had been the odd enterprising vengeance-seeker who found them. The homemade super villains who thought ridding the world of Iron Man would be a service. It’s not that they hadn’t faced far worse threats. It’s that they weren’t supposed to have to face them here in a place of sanctuary.

With a sigh, Nebula looks at her growing pile of logs and realizes she should stop if she doesn’t want her agitation to be evident. Tony’s aware of her nervous habits. She buries the axe blade in a stump and carries enough logs for a fire over to the stone fire pit. Morgan’s been begging to roast marshmallows all week, and it looks like tonight will be clear.

She trudges back up to the house to clean herself off. Tony’s in the kitchen, prepping the steaks. Three are seasoned with salt and pepper and a fourth is rubbed with a chili salt blend that Nebula made herself with chilies from the garden. He works mostly with his left hand, the right out of its bandages, but still weak and mostly useless after the infinity stones.

She pushes a protesting U aside with a boot so she can get to the sink. The normal, domestic rhythm of it all helps to restore her equilibrium.

“I thought a fire tonight,” she says, washing her hands.

“Ah yes,” Tony says. “We must appease the fire goddess.”

Nebula snorts.

“You think we should be concerned about that?” he asks. “I mean, we’re not actually raising a little pyromaniac, right?”

“I have put the matches in a very high place, and she is still quite small,” she says, turning to lean against the sink and watch him work.

“Not exactly the reassurance I was looking for there, Blue,” Tony says, giving her an asymmetrical smile.

“All children are a bit monstrous,” she says. “She is not abnormal.”

“No, but she’s smart,” he replies. “I’m worried she’s going to outthink us.”

Their eyes meet, and Nebula tilts her head to one side, considering.

“That is a concern,” she concedes.

“I know we childproofed everything when she started to crawl, I’m just not sure that we Morgan … proofed.”

He’s distracted by the sight of Peter clomping down the stairs. The boy has visibly just come from the bath, his thin t-shirt clinging to damp skin, his still-dripping hair curling at the ends as it falls over his forehead.

Nebula steps forward and leans on the counter beside Tony, studying his face in the periphery of her vision. From the foot of the stairs, Peter chews on his bottom lip and rubs nervously at the back of his neck with one hand.

Tony’s face shifts, and the bottom drops out of Nebula’s stomach.

Peter says something, but Nebula’s brain can’t make any sense of it. She’s checking, rechecking, trying to see something other than what she thinks she does.

The expression on Tony’s face right now is one she hasn’t seen for a long time. Not since the last time she was with him and Pepper, before they moved full-time out to the cabin. It was a few months before Morgan was born. They had been in the city, parting ways after a meal together, and Pepper had made a joke that Nebula can’t even remember now. Tony had reached out to take her hand, kissed her knuckles and looked at her just like this.

Enamored, she thinks. He is enamored with that boy.

It isn’t just a fondness. His pupils are dilated, and his face has taken on a hazy expression, half there, half not. He’s gone.

How could she have missed this? Misread everything so terribly? Well, she’s been avoiding Peter whenever possible, hasn’t she? She finds him grating. And the cabin is safe territory for Tony, more so even than the tower. That is also a place of business. This is just home. His mask is slipping.

When she reflects on it in the future, Nebula won’t be proud of her first response to this knowledge. It is a childlike: _They’re mine. They chose me. You can’t have them._

She wants to drag him out of their home by the ear and kick him down the stairs. She wants to challenge him in combat, which he could not win because he is weak and soft-hearted. She wants to curl in a corner and wish it all away.

No one had ever _chosen_ Nebula before Tony and Morgan did. Not unless you count Thanos, when he pulled her from a crowd of those destined for slaughter on her home planet. She doesn’t, fairly certain it was nothing but chance that she was pulled aside. His honor would have allowed for nothing else.

But four years ago everything changed. She had shown up at the cabin to check on Tony in the wake of Pepper’s move, and he had answered the door looking haggard and sleep-deprived with a wailing baby hoisted over one shoulder. He had held a tiny Morgan out to her by the armpits with a mumbled “Take her, she hates me.”

Morgan had stilled instantly in Nebula’s awkward grip and looked at her with wide brown eyes that seemed to tunnel inside of her. She had reached out a chubby hand and gently tugged at the tip of her nose, then burst into a fit of high-pitched giggles.

It had been such a silly moment, but it felt like an anointment when Morgan had buried herself into the crook of Nebula’s arm and started to babble at her enthusiastically. When Tony had told her, desperately, that night “I don’t think I can do this alone, Blue.” Well. What could she say but “You don’t have to.”

Deep down, Nebula has always worried she would be replaced in their lives eventually. Terrans are fond of their nuclear families, and of course a romantic relationship would be preferable to the connection between she and Tony, no matter how important it is to her.

Because of Pepper, she had always pictured some elegant woman who would take over her place, though she knows Tony’s not particular about things like gender. But worrying vaguely about a possibility in the dark of night is very different from facing a reality in the clear light of day.

It’s too soon. Tony hasn’t dated anyone even casually in the last five years, and Nebula thought she had time. So much more time.

“Anything I can help with?” Peter asks, and Tony sets him to cutting vegetables for a salad.

Nebula is rattled out of the whirl of her own thoughts when Tony knocks a shoulder against hers.

“You okay?” he asks, quietly. “You look a little off.”

The space between his eyebrows is crinkled in concern. She places a hand on his shoulder and tries to smile, but it feels as unnatural as it must look.

“I am fine,” she says. “I will go check on Morgan. You cook.”

He briefly lets his hand rest over hers, but allows her to slip away. From his place at the counter, Peter gives her a happy little wave. She barely represses a snarl, and can’t stop from slamming the door behind her.

Morgan’s tent is set up a few yards from the house, and she pokes her head out of the entrance when Nebula crouches down and clears her throat.

“What’s the password?” She asks, all business.

“Hippopotamus,” Nebula replies, with equal seriousness.

Morgan nods, and throws back the flap of the tent to allow Nebula to crawl inside. It is a space hardly designed for someone her size, and she has to fold herself awkwardly to fit. Without comment, Morgan hands her a ball of string and arranges her hands to hold them correctly for her purposes. She has a tangle of sticks and strings in her own lap that she manipulates with concentration, if not in any pattern Nebula can discern.

“What are you making?” she asks.

“It’s a present for Peter,” Morgan says, her tongue sticking out a little as she ties a knot.

“Oh.”

How did this happen, she wonders? What about Peter Parker allows him to so easily ingratiate himself with her people?

“You don’t like him.”

Nebula looks up from the tangle in her hands to find Morgan studying her.

“I do not dislike him,” she lies.

Morgan rolls her eyes in a move entirely cribbed from her father.

“Fine,” Nebula admits. “But I hardly like anyone.”

The little girl seems to accept that easily enough. She starts asking her opinion on the colors of string Peter might prefer, and Nebula allows herself to relax a little as Morgan goes off on a tangent of the virtues of orange over green.

She can’t lose her. Not yet. But maybe it doesn’t have to be a duel to the death. Maybe it can be simpler. Simple as revealing Peter’s true nature to Tony. All the weaknesses Nebula saw from the beginning are still there. Too young, too reckless, too soft. Enamored can be broken. Even if it hurts temporarily, ultimately it’s for Tony’s own good.

Strategy forming in her mind, she turns her attention back to Morgan.

“Alright,” Nebula says, holding up the tangle in her lap and looking at it dubiously. “Explain to me what exactly this is.”

*

It has settled into an almost perfect night, Tony reflects as he takes a swig of beer and looks into the crackling flames of the fire. In the field beside them, the fireflies are flashing out Morse code messages, and the air is filled with cricket song and the gentle lapping of the lake against the shore.

Across the fire, Nebula is seated on a folding chair with Morgan on the ground, propped up against her leg. Systematically, she toasts marshmallows to an even char and then plucks them from the end of the stick to feed to Morgan in bits, like she’s a baby bird. Morgan isn’t allowed to toast her own marshmallows. Not after last time.

Gerald has his head butted up directly against Morgan’s leg, big, sad eyes deployed directly at her so that she’ll sneak him marshmallows from the bag. Tony knows from experience that that much sugar will send him on a frenzy through the garden, but he feels too relaxed in the moment to scold his daughter. They’ll plant more gojis, or whatever. It’ll be fine. 

Next to him, Peter has a sweating beer in one hand and a toasting stick in the other. He still hasn’t told Tony why he’s here, what he’s running from. Whatever it is that’s driven Peter here without any warning, he’s sure it’s serious. Not like he would be the kid’s first choice for sanctuary, but at least he still knows that Tony will be there for him when he’s desperate.

He’s already alerted FRIDAY to upgrade the cabin’s security protocols to yellow. He can wait for the details. Tony trusts Peter to tell him what he needs to know when he needs to know it. In the meantime, he’s invested in doing what he can to remove the telling dark circles under the kid’s eyes. 

Peter pulls his stick back from the fire, frantically blowing on a fireball that might previously have been a marshmallow.

“Well, shit,” he says when he finally gets it out, left with nothing but an ashen husk at the end of the stick.

He realizes what he’s said a couple seconds after he says it, clapping a hand to his mouth just as Nebula does the same for Morgan.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark,” he mumbles through his cupped hand.

“She’s heard worse,” Tony says. “And repeated worse.”

He gives Morgan a mock glare at that. Seriously, it’s like she only remembers curse words exist immediately after someone has said one, but she’s got a sixth sense for that.

Morgan, by the look of Nebula’s put-out expression, has licked her hand to get her to remove it, and is now smiling smugly.

“I didn’t say it,” she insists.

“You had help,” Tony replies.

“Okay,” Peter says, motioning to Morgan for the marshmallow bag. “I’m going to try this one more time, and then I give up.”

“Would you like me to toast one for you, dear?”

It pops out of his mouth without a second thought, lulled into complacency by the coziness of the moment.

Tony can feel Nebula’s eyes boring into him from one side while Peter studiously refuses to look at him, taking care to select the right marshmallow.

“N-no,” he stutters. “I think I’ve got this, sir.”

Tony clears his throat and nods, not entirely trusting himself. And that is the crux, isn’t it? He doesn’t trust himself, not in the things that count. Apparently the distance he’s tried to engineer between himself and the kid hasn’t been effective.

Peter Parker, in the firelight, shouldn’t be nearly as compelling as he is. His skin glows golden with the reflected flames, shadows picking out the cut of his cheekbones – more pronounced than Tony remembers – and the hollows of his eyes. He looks like one of those paintings that Georges de La Tour did of people lit only by candlelight, pensive and luminous. Tony shouldn’t think things like that.

He tries to push all that to the back of his mind, with the refuse where it belongs. He can be normal. He can. Nebula’s gaze still burns at him, but Peter appears to have moved on from Tony’s awkwardness, and is having an animated discussion with Morgan about constellations.

“Okay,” he says, pointing upward. “I know that one’s the big dipper, and if you follow the tail, it’ll lead you directly to … Yep. The little dipper. And that is all I’ve got.”

Morgan’s looking at him with the disappointment clear from her pout.

“That’s not right,” she says, crossing her arms.

“I’m pretty sure about those,” Peter protests. “They’re like the only ones I do know.”

“No,” Morgan insists stubbornly. “Those are the star whales. Duh.”

“Yeah Pete,” Tony echoes, barely repressing his laughter. “Duh.”

Peter sticks his tongue out at him, and Tony returns the gesture.

“Tell the star whale story,” Morgan says, tipping her head back further to address Nebula. “Peter doesn’t know it.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t –” Nebula starts.

“Please?” Morgan says, a little pout in her lips.

“I wanna hear about star whales,” Peter adds, turning away from Tony. “They sound cool. It’s like alternate constellations?”

Nebula grimaces, but when she leans forward and scratches her fingers into Morgan’s hair, Tony knows she’s given in.

“Fine,” she says, using her marshmallow-toasting stick to poke at the logs in the fire, sending a burst of orange embers up into the sky. “Star whales were once common in the skies. Big as continents, they traveled through the stars in familial pods feeding on the ambient gamma radiation of the universe and, it is said, providing aid to travelers in need.”

Morgan crosses her legs, pulls Gerald’s head into her lap and leans back against Nebula as she speaks, her eyes taking on the wide, dreamy look they get whenever she hears a really good story.

“But that was thousands of years ago,” Nebula says. “As space travel became more common, their numbers dwindled. Some say they died off – from collisions with spaceships, from overcrowding of their migration paths, from pollution. Others say they chose to leave this galaxy, travel to another where they had more space to roam. Regardless, they became rare. And in becoming rare, they became precious. Precious to those who wanted to save them, and to those who wanted the opposite.”

Morgan lets out a little hiss of displeasure at this, and Tony finds himself leaning forward into the story.

“There was a great hunter, whose name has now been stripped from history for his sins, who decided that because of their elusiveness a star whale would be the perfect prize,” Nebula continues, pointing a little off to the side to Orion, his arm raised in attack.

“No one before him had ever dared, or if they did, would not have dared advertise their sin. This man did not care. He spent years tracking their patterns until he found a pod. It was small. Only a mother whale and child. The hunter knew he would not get another such opportunity. He readied his laser spear and took his aim, certain that once he made his kill, he would become a legend.”

“No …” Morgan whispers softly.

“No,” Nebula agrees, pulling her in closer. “Because all this time the fates had been watching the hunter, and they would not allow such an injustice. They sent a great solar flare that swallowed up his first true shot, and then his second. He was lining up his third, still determined on his prey, when the flare devoured his ship, and him along with it.”

“But the whales were alright,” Morgan insists.

“They were,” Nebula assures her, pulling Morgan up into her lap and caging her in with an arm. “But the suddenness of the attack startled them, sending them swimming off in different directions. Mother and child were separated, disoriented by the flare and unable to find their way back to each other. That’s them, up there.”

She raises her free arm to point, guiding all their eyes to first the big dipper and then the little dipper.

“Mother and child.”

Tony drinks in the tableau of his daughter and his friend, faces tilted to the stars, clinging together. They could not be better suited to each other, and yet if even one thing in a thousand had changed maybe they wouldn’t have each other now. Nebula believes in the fates, and Tony never has. But maybe just this once he’s wrong.

“Star whales live impossibly long lives,” Nebula says. “Some say they are still out there now, singing too each other through the spiral of the galaxy. Getting closer each day to their reunion. Someday, they will meet and their stars will fade from the sky.”

Morgan sighs contentedly and wiggles deeper into Nebula’s grasp.

“Also the Hunter was sentenced to hang in the stars, unmoving, for a million million years watching his quarry slip away,” Nebula concludes, sharply. “For his audacity.”

“Wow.”

It’s Peter’s voice that breaks the spell of silence that lingers in the air, and he becomes flustered when all three of them turn to stare at him.

“I just, uh … Cool story? Sorry. Um …”

He looks pleadingly at Tony for help, so Tony claps his hands together.

“Now,” he says. “Bedtime, babydoll. Well past.”

Morgan’s protests fail to win a reprieve, and soon Nebula is escorting her back up to the house. When they’re alone Tony kicks Peter’s foot to jostle him out of temporary embarrassment.

“Tell me how Happy’s doing,” he asks. “He still angling for a date with Aunt Hottie?”

Peter’s face scrunches in displeasure, and Tony ignores how much fun it is to make the tips of his ears go pink.

“Oh God, Mr. Stark,” he says. “I don’t know what to do. He’s just so into her and she acts like it’s all casual?”

“He snagged a date? How’d it go?”

“I have no idea,” Peter says. “I made myself very scarce that evening, and I refuse to think about why.”

“That seems like a good general policy,” Tony agrees.

“I’m a little worried about Happy though,” Peter says, tilting back in his chair and running his hands through his hair. Tony’s eyes linger on the flex of his forearms. “May’s the best, but she can be a bit of a heartbreaker, you know?”

“Runs in the family,” he husks out.

Peter’s eyes, lowered at half-mast, fly open and lock on his, digging, assessing. Tony feels unable to catch his breath.

Luckily, they’re interrupted before he can embarrass himself further. Nebula pads back into the circle of the fire and sits, pulling her chair closer to Peter.

“She down for the count?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes in response.

“For now. I asked Dum-E to keep an eye on her.”

“Yeah, we’ll see how well that works out.”

Posture stiff, Nebula clears her throat and pulls a bottle from somewhere to rest on her knee. Inside, the contents are silver and swirling, akin to liquid mercury. The bottle is two-thirds full. Tony raises a skeptical eyebrow at her. He remembers the night they emptied it that far. Well, he remembers the pain of the morning after.

“Since we are celebrating a reunion, I thought a toast was in order,” she says, awkwardly, staring at the dirt next to her boots.

Nebula with a peace offering. It’s confusing, sure, but also sweet. Tony hides his smile with the mouth of his beer bottle, afraid to scare her off her goal.

Carefully, Nebula pops the cork out of the bottle and raises it.

“To Peter,” she says, tilting it slightly in his direction and nodding to him. “Welcome to our home.”

Tony doesn’t miss the emphasis on _Our_ , but baby steps. Nebula takes a long swig, then passes the bottle to Peter, who eyes it curiously.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Contraxian wine,” Nebula says. “It is much sought after throughout the galaxy. Often used to seal Ravager contracts.”

Peter tilts the bottle this way and that, watching the metallic liquid flow up the sides of the glass.

“And it’s safe for humans?” he asks.

“Of course,” Nebula assures.

“Also deadly,” Tony interjects. “I tested it, and it’s something close to 200-proof by Earth standards, so be careful.”

Peter tips the bottle towards Nebula in salute before taking a long pull. Tony puts a hand out to stop him.

“Easy there, spiderling,” he says.

Should he be more concerned about giving an 18-year-old alcohol? Probably. But Peter’s fought and died while protecting the universe, so it seems shoddy to deny him a drink if he wants one. Plus, Tony was into such worse things at the same age that a little supervised drinking seems as innocent as a day at the zoo.

“It’s okay, Mr. Stark,” the kid says, passing the bottle along to him. “Alcohol doesn’t really do anything for me. I think it’s a healing factor thing. I metabolize it too fast. Tastes interesting, though. Sort of fruity and metallic at the same time.”

“It is a trip,” Tony agrees, taking the bottle from Peter, their fingertips brushing ever so slightly on transfer.

He takes a mouthful of the liquid. It’s got a strange viscosity to it, just a touch thicker than seems natural. A little unsettling at first, but not unpleasant. Tony swallows carefully, then nods to Peter.

“Welcome home, kid,” he says, almost echoing Nebula’s toast.

He means it generally. Peter is home at last, back to Earth, back to the land of the living. And Tony will always be grateful. But also, he wants the kid to feel at home here, to be comfortable in the one place where Tony found shelter from the world and from his own grief.

Peter doesn’t look at him, after the toast. Instead he stares into the fire and clenches his jaw. Tony wonders if he’s done something to upset him. He’s made Peter go weepy more times than he likes to think about since he got back, and hated himself for it every time. No one should make the kid cry. Especially not him.

He accepts the bottle when Tony taps it against his fingers, and takes another long swig. Peter and Nebula pass the bottle back and forth, Tony waving it away after the initial toast. He doesn’t have Nebula’s tolerance or Peter’s metabolism, and one night drunk on Contraxian wine was enough for him.

The two others start up a conversation about spaceship engines, and Tony mostly tunes out, watching the fire, watching their faces. Nebula’s remains mostly unmoved, which isn’t surprising, but Peter’s grows lax. His words start to get jumbled around in his own mouth. Tony can’t help but smile. It’s good to see him looser, relaxed. Even if it is just a chemical reaction.

Nebula’s in the middle of an explanation of crystalized fuel sources when Peter reaches over and places a hand on her wrist. Tony sees her stiffen, and wonders if he ought to intervene.

“Hey,” he says with a sloppy grin. “Hey. Will you teach me how throw that thing? That was, like, so cool today. Aside from the part where I almost got stabbed.”

His gesture indicates the dagger strapped to Nebula’s thigh. Nebula’s smile flashes sharp, and she pulls the knife from its sheath.

“This?” she asks. “It is easy.”

Peter stands, too abruptly apparently because he has to pause to get his balance.

“Whoa,” he says, plastering a hand to his forehead. But then he tugs at Nebula’s hand, and she rises. “C’mon, show me.”

Tony looks at Nebula across the way and they have a silent conversation filled with moving eyebrows and rolling eyes. The gist is that, yes, Nebula will make sure that Peter doesn’t impale himself.

They move a little bit away, still within the reach of the fire’s light, and Tony can hear Peter mumbling to Nebula “Your hand is the coolest thing I have ever seen.”

He winces. She’s sensitive about that, and unlikely to accept Peter’s inebriation as an excuse for the insult. Still, she doesn’t react except to squeeze a little tighter with the arm wrapped around Peter’s waist for support.

Maybe Tony should stop this, but he trusts Nebula to keep Peter safe, and he’s hopeful that a bonding experience will help to ease the awkward tension that tends to linger in the air between the two.

He watches as Nebula takes out her knife and demonstrates a throw, sending it whizzing into the bark of a tree about three yards away. Peter rocks on his feet and studies her intently as she demonstrates a few more times.

When the knife is handed to him, he holds it between thumb and forefinger, end pointed to the ground and swinging. Nebula corrects his grip, turning him in the direction of the tree target, and moves his arm through the appropriate motion once, giving a few instructions along the way. Then she steps back with a smirk on her face.

Peter sways a couple times before planting his feet, hauling back, and hurling the knife like a goddamn baseball. Tony’s on his feet in alarm a moment before the loud crack of metal against wood, followed by a creak as the tree sways, tilts and falls backward with a groan. Luckily, it’s not so big.

Right. Super strength. Tony really should have considered the super strength in this equation. He rarely has to. Peter’s always demonstrated such perfect control over his powers.

He rushes to Peter while Nebula moves to the fallen tree. The kid is still swaying a little, head tilted to the side in an attempt to examine and understand what’s just happened.

Tony puts both hands on his shoulders, turning him to check him over for injuries, but almost the second he reaches out, Peter sags into his touch, and Tony has to clutch him awkwardly to his chest to keep him from hitting the ground.

“Mr. Stark,” he slurs, looking mournfully up at Tony. “I think I broke your tree.”

“It’s okay, Pete,” he says, pushing sweaty hair out of Peter’s eyes. “Sub-par tree at best. You did me a favor, really.”

The kid’s eyes well up, and Tony feels his heart wrench.

“I didn’t mean to break it,” Peter whispers to him.

“I know. Stronger than you look. I always forget that part.”

“I think,” Peter declares, mashing his face into Tony’s chest, so his words are muffled by fabric. “I think I’m drunk.”

Tony can feel the warm huff of Peter’s breath through his sweater, and tries not to let it distract him. In his periphery, he sees Nebula tug her knife out of the fallen tree.

“I think we ought to get you to bed,” he says, and watches Peter’s nod of agreement transform into a kitten-like nuzzle against him. It’s definitely time to call it a night.

He puts his left shoulder under Peter’s armpit for support and starts to walk him back toward the cabin. They only make it a couple steps before his feet start to drag, impeding their progress.

“Alright,” Tony says, finally. “I guess we’ll do this the old-fashioned way.”

He hauls Peter up into a princess carry, his right arm tucked under his legs for support, his left cradling Peter’s back. He expects flailing protest, but Peter just sighs and helpfully wraps his arms around Tony’s neck and rests his head on his shoulder.

“There we go,” Tony says to himself, as it appears Peter is mostly asleep.

He’s not back to full strength yet, and he thought this would be a challenge, but Peter is surprisingly light in his arms. It’s almost as though his bones are hollow, like a bird’s. Now that he thinks about it, what Peter does is close enough to flying to require a biological change.

“You’re a medical marvel, kid,” Tony murmurs, pushing open the screen door with his shoulder and heading up the stairs.

“M’not, you know,” Peter’s breath is a huff of warmth against Tony’s clavicle, his voice soft with sleep and drink.

“Hmm?”

“A kid. Not anymore. M’22.”

“Think your math’s a little off, Pete,” Tony says, adjusting Peter’s weight as they reach the first landing, then starting up to the attic room. “The years don’t count if you weren’t there for them.”

“Was though,” Peter’s voice his barely a whisper as they climb, and he runs the tip of his nose up Tony’s throat, sending a shiver through his body. “I felt them.”

Tony pauses on the stair, the shiver twisting into something painful and deep. That can’t be true, right? Peter’s just drunk and talking out of his head. Must be.

“Shh,” he says, trying to push the idea away like a bad dream. He hoists the kid’s warm, pliant body closer and rubs a hand along the ridge of his spine. “Shh.”

He pushes the door to the attic room open with his foot and tries to be gentle as he lays Peter out on the bed. It’s a little difficult to untangle himself, as Peter seems reluctant to release his hold on Tony’s neck.

“You smell nice,” the kid says, dreamily, as Tony leans forward to unlock his hands.

Tony places Peter’s arms on the mattress, closes his eyes and takes a minute to breathe.

“Uh-huh,” he replies. “Bedtime now, spiderling.”

Peter’s reply is muffled as he twists to push his face into the pillow, shirt riding up to reveal far too much golden skin.

Tony unties Peter’s dusty Converse and pulls them off, but that’s as far as he allows himself to go. Sleeping in his jeans won’t kill him. He pulls the afghan at the bottom of the bed over Peter’s body. The kid’s face is peaceful now, insensible to the world. Tony brushes the hair from his forehead, like he’s been longing to all day, then leans down to brush a kiss against his hairline, breathing in wood smoke and sweat.

“Sweet dreams, Pete,” he whispers.

Tony backs out of the room and closes the door, leaning against it and letting his head flop back in frustration. Fuck, he’s in so much trouble.


	4. High Hope of a Midsummer Morning

Tony doesn’t really sleep that night. He pokes his head into Morgan’s room to make sure she’s still in bed, which leads to one trip for a glass of water, two under-bed checks for monsters, and several denials of another bedtime story before she drifts back into sleep.

When he gets to his own room, however, no dice. Tony stares up at the ceiling for hours, but can’t fall asleep. Whenever he begins to doze off, he remembers Peter muttering about _feeling_ the years he was gone, and it wakes him with a juddering heart. The conclusions he could draw from that are terrifying.

Finally, when the sky lightens from navy to cerulean, he pulls himself out of bed and shambles downstairs. There’s just the palest hint of pink to the sky, and the morning fog covers the surface of the lake and the front lawn in a thick mist.

In the kitchen, Nebula is already awake, sitting on a stool at the kitchen island with a starkpad laid out in front of her and a steaming cup of coffee off to one side. So he’s not the only one who couldn’t sleep.

She’s dressed in fuzzy football-pattered pajama pants that Tony got her one Christmas as a gag gift and his faded t-shirt from the Bern 2000 science conference. It still feels novel to see her looking so soft. He takes a moment just to look at her, face stretching into a yawn before she takes a bite of her favorite fruit salad combo – strawberries, bananas, jalapenos.

“What?” she asks when she looks up and realizes he’s just standing there looking at her, probably with a goofy grin on his face.

“Coffee?” Tony asks, shaking himself to try and get rid of his fog.

Nebula just grunts in reply and pokes her chin out in the direction of the coffee pot.

Tony pours himself a cup and holds it directly under his nose while it cools to a non-tongue-scalding temperature.

“Mmm, I love it when you add the cinnamon,” he says into the cup.

“You could also do this,” she points out.

“I’m always in too much of a hurry,” he says. “Besides, the last time I tried it tasted like feet.”

“Because you added cumin,” Nebula says with a dramatic sigh. “And cumin smells like feet.”

“I shouldn’t be allowed to mix ingredients before I’ve had my coffee,” Tony says, judging that his cup has cooled enough to risk it and taking a sip. Yep, burns so good.

He meanders over to take a seat at the island, kicking Nebula’s foot as he passes, and she sucks her teeth at him in response.

“So,” Tony says. “I’m awake at this unholy hour because of bad brain. My brain is very bad. What brings you here?”

“Your beast has eaten all my goji berries,” she says.

“You normally check those at ass o’clock?” Tony asks, sensing the dodge and trying to counter.

Nebula narrows her eyes at him.

“I check them when I check them,” she says, firmly.

They spend a tense beat in silent standoff before Tony gives in. If something’s really up, he’ll finagle it out of her later, when she’s less on guard.

“Okay, well first of all, Gerald is our beast. A community holding, as it were.”

“You only say that when he’s rampaging—“

“Gerald doesn’t rampage. He doesn’t have the energy.”

“Through my garden,” Nebula continues, her voice rising into a tense whisper. “He needs a leash and a chain.”

“Gerald doesn’t respond well to personal restrictions. He’s a free spirit.”

“He is an untrained menace.”

“Also, I think he would just learn to eat the metal, and we don’t want to give him a taste for that. He’d start on the vehicles next.”

Nebula’s mouth is a thin, disapproving line.

“I’ll buy new gojis,” Tony offers.

“They take time.”

“And I’ll intervene whenever I see Morgan give Gerald sugar.”

“Marshmallows,” Nebula intones ominously.

“Sorry?”

She lets an exasperated huff of air out through her nose, but waves off his apologies.

Patience not being foremost amongst Tony’s virtues, he leans his elbows on the counter and props his head in his hands to better bat his lashes in Nebula’s direction.

“Blue,” he says, reaching out to poke at her spoon just before she puts it into her mouth. She growls at him in response. “Blue, what’s got you all mopey?”

She sticks the waylaid spoon in her mouth and chews aggressively.

“Is it the hand thing? From Peter? Because I get it, but it’s really not a personal thing. He does that with everyone. You should hear him whenever he sees Bucky. He’s just a tech nerd.”

“I am past caring for the vagaries of young drunkards,” she replies. “Children usually don’t think before they speak. It is fine.”

The _children_ cuts through Tony like a knife. She’s right, though. Of course she’s right. It’s the reason the guilt bubbles over in his gut every time he fails to set a firm boundary with Peter, every time he crosses another line. He’s in _high school_ for Christ’s sake. Well, recently graduated. But that’s the sort of detail that only a very twisted person would find relevant.

“I mean, you did kind of supply the booze last night, Neb,” he says, weakly.

She shrugs smoothly, taking her bowl to the sink.

“Knowing one’s limit is an important skill,” she says. “I’m going to properly survey the damage.”

She pats him on the shoulder, unaware of his steadily-deepening funk, and heads out the door.

Tony slumps. He rubs aggressively at his face and stares moodily into the depths of his coffee cup. He just needs to re-establish equilibrium is all. Act normal. He can act normal around the kid. Well, normal-ish. He’s done it before, he can do it again.

Twitchy and generally unhappy with the state of the world, he picks up his cup and goes in search of something to disassemble.

*

Peter wakes to the feeling of a cool breeze ruffling through his hair from the open window. The room smells like pine and sunshine, but he grumbles anyway as he rolls over and buries his face in the pillow to hide from the morning.

He isn’t hung over exactly. His healing factor is too powerful for that. So no headache, light sensitivity, or nausea. Instead his entire body feels tender, like a bruise. He’s afraid one wrong move will feel like digging a thumb into the purple spot, releasing all that built-up pain.

Then the memories of last night filter back in, and the ache hits him. A metaphorical ache. He really had hoped he could make it through one entire day without embarrassing himself. No such luck.

Peter didn’t even know that he could get drunk. Nothing at any of the parties Ned had enthusiastically dragged him to had done the trick. Gin makes his mouth numb, but he thinks that might be a latent food allergy.

Mr. Stark had warned him about the Sontaran wine or whatever they were drinking last night, but Peter hadn’t heeded the warning. He had rambled embarrassingly and knocked down a tree because he forgot to control his strength, and, and ...

Peter sits up carefully. He doesn’t remember much after the tree, certainly not how he managed to navigate stairs in his state without breaking the house, too. _Oh God._

But, no, when he places his feet on the floorboards and carefully exerts weight, they seem pretty stable. So maybe he didn’t completely break the house. Moving gingerly, Peter strips off the clothes he slept in last night – they smell like campfire and BO – and pulls fresh ones out of his backpack.

He splashes his face with some water, brushes his teeth to remove the weird metallic aftertaste of alien wine from his mouth, then braces himself to go survey his damage.

Things seem strangely, blessedly normal throughout the house. No smashed-in walls or broken support beams or anything else to suggest he got too far out of hand. So that’s something. In the living room, Morgan is zoned out in front of the television with a bowl of lucky charms on her lap and a blanket draped around her shoulders. She barely acknowledges Peter as he passes by. Spider-Man may be cool, but he apparently cannot compete with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on a Saturday morning.

When he walks into the kitchen, Dum-E whirrs and trills at him excitedly from behind island, and then rolls around and offers up a mug of coffee that’s a hair’s breadth from spilling over. It sloshes onto Peter’s hand and the floor when he takes the cup.

Wincing silently from the burn, Peter gives him a pat on his arm.

“Thanks, boy,” he says, voice rough from sleep and apparently drinking paint stripper.

Dum-E beeps approvingly at Peter, then backs up, knocking over some cans on the counter and sending them rolling in an attempt to get at a towel to clean up the mess on the floor. Peter figures his interference in this process will only exacerbate things, so he backs away slowly.

The coffee is a little too sweet for Peter’s taste. Well, almost indigestibly sweet. Like the bot had dumped an entire bowl of sugar in the cup. Feels about right.

Not being in a position to sacrifice caffeine even in the face of tooth rot, Peter drinks it anyway, wandering behind Morgan and ruffling her hair as he goes. She puts up her arms in defense and grumbles at him, but doesn’t look away from the screen.

Bracing himself to make a really humbling apology or two, he goes in search of the cabin’s other residents. He finds Mr. Stark’s office empty, and opens a couple more doors that end up being a laundry room and a bathroom. Eventually, he discovers a glass door that leads out to an airy screened-in porch.

The room is tiled in terra cotta with a variety of green viney things hanging in baskets from the ceiling. One side of the room has been set up as an art studio for Morgan with a kid-sized easel and a painting that appears to be Morgan herself wielding a comically oversized sword. The other has rattan lounging chairs with an old suitcase-style portable record player on a low table and a shelf behind it stacked with albums.

There’s a record spinning in the player, and even before he opens the door, Peter can hear Jim Croce strumming his guitar and crooning just a few beats slower than he should be.

“One less set of footsteps on your floor, one less man to walk in. One less pair of jeans upon your door. One less voice a’talkin’ …”

Kind of boppy for a break-up song.

Mr. Stark is there in low-slung jeans and a black tank, the reactor glowing faintly underneath. He’s wearing big, black framed tinted glasses and has a screw driver clenched between his teeth and sticking out of his mouth at an angle like a cigar while he circles the record player.

“C’mon, baby, tell daddy what’s wrong,” Peter hears him mutter to himself.

Peter’s mouth goes dry, and he takes another sip of coffee as he watches the biceps in the man’s arms flex when he crosses them. Peter never really forgets about the biceps and how they make him feel, but he usually doesn’t have to face them head on like this, much less first thing in the morning. He’s left unprepared.

Then Mr. Stark crouches down to make an adjustment, denim stretching tantalizingly over his ass, and Peter nearly chokes on his coffee. It’s creepy to just stand here and ogle, and really he ought to announce himself. Maybe just a little bit longer …

“Motherfucking shitting asshole!”

All the hair on Peter’s body stands on end, and he rushes forward into the room, where Mr. Stark is bent over double clutching at his right hand.

“Goddamn useless fucker,” he grinds out through clenched teeth.

“Mr. Stark!”

Without a second thought, Peter pushes himself into Mr. Stark’s personal space, forcing him to unfold from the hunched curl he’s adopted. He takes the injured hand carefully, feeling the muscles jump and spasm beneath his fingers. The hand is curled up into a claw, fingers bunched together as though Tony were about to snap them.

Peter ignores the jolt of fear that runs through him at the thought, and instead focuses on applying gentle pressure to the muscles in Mr. Stark’s palm, massaging the thenar eminence with his thumbs. The skin there is still rough, tool-callused.

“It’s okay,” Peter murmurs. “You’re alright. Just try to relax.”

“I always fucking forget I can’t use it,” Mr. Stark says. “Like an idiot.”

“Not an idiot,” Peter says, with a huff of laughter. “You just don’t have any patience.”

Their heads are so close together, bent over their joined hands, that Peter can feel the exhale of Mr. Stark’s own somewhat-pained laughter against his cheek.

Slowly, the muscles under Peter’s fingers begin to relax and the hand unfolds.

Mr. Stark lets out a groan of relief as he flexes his cramped fingers, and Peter’s breath catches at the sound. Their eyes catch for an almost unbearable moment, and then Mr. Stark is shuffling back away from him.

They’re both quiet, Peter trying to look anywhere but at Mr. Stark. The record has moved on to play Dreamin’ Again.

“I dreamed that we were lovers in the lemon-scented rain, but when I woke up, oh I found that again I had been dreamin’ …”

That’s not helping.

“Not what I expected you to be listening to,” he says in an effort to break the awkward silence.

“Nebula’s album collection,” Mr. Stark says. “Quill’s influence, I think. Anyone who spends time with him develops an insatiable appetite for mid-70s soft rock. It’s like a disease.”

Peter snorts.

“Turntable’s moving a little slow, so I thought I’d take a look at it. Nebula won’t let me in the lab, but I thought I could at least handle a fucking record player.”

He sounds so dejected that Peter wants to reach out again to comfort him, but that’s probably a bad idea. He’s invaded Mr. Stark’s personal space enough.

“Well,” Peter suggests a little hesitantly. “You wanna tell me what to do?”

Mr. Stark considers, rubbing at his beard.

“Alright, kid. Let’s see if we can get this baby humming.”

He searches around on the ground, finding the fallen screwdriver and slapping it into Peter’s hand.

“There’s a panel on the front that should open pretty easy,” he says.

Peter crouches down and carefully unscrews the panel, looking inside to see the inner workings of the record player, the thin rubber belt spinning the turntable above.

“I think one of the elements holding the belt in place is loose.”

Mr. Stark’s breath is warm on the back of Peter’s neck, leaning over to get a good look inside.

“Y-yeah,” Peter agrees. “There’s one in the back that’s sort of wobbly.”

He’ll have to take it apart from the top to fix it properly. Peter stands and turns the player off, carefully removing the record from the turntable and setting it off to the side. He unscrews the top of the player from the base and takes a look at the whole set up.

“Looks like a torque wrench will do it,” Mr. Stark says, leaning over Peter’s shoulder to get a good look. Hold up just a second, spiderkid.”

He rustles around in a hulking red toolbox set off to the side, and comes back with a tiny silver torque wrench that he slips into Peter’s hand. When Peter goes to adjust the bolt, Mr. Stark’s hand hovers above his, almost touching, but not quite.

“Careful,” he says. “This old girl’s delicate.”

“I got this, sir.”

Peter turns to speak, and finds Tony’s face just inches from his. There’s a wrinkle of concentration between his eyebrows, bits of silver mixed into the black of his beard. His lips twitch up into a crooked smile.

“I know you got it,” he says, voice a low rumble. “Indulge me.”

Peter can feel his breathing go shallow, his pulse trip steadily upward. Is he going to swoon? He feels distinctly swoony, but he has to concentrate and not do that. It would be so embarrassing. He swallows thickly, wrenches his eyes from Tony’s and turns back to the record player, still enclosed in the loose circle of his arms.

“Steady,” Mr. Stark says, leaning in a little closer.

“Yep.”

He turns the wrench lightly, watching as it straightens and the belt slips properly into place.

“Right there,” Mr. Stark says.

He should probably be annoyed by the micromanagement, but he isn’t. It feels heady, like for a moment Peter’s just an extension of Mr. Stark’s hand, a tool he’s using to get the job done. Maybe not something he’d want all the time, but just now he feels drunk on the feeling.

“Good work, kid,” Mr. Stark says, laying a warm palm on Peter’s shoulder. “I think that’s got it.”

Peter nods, and goes about reassembling the record player.

“I’m, um, I’m sorry about last night, sir,” he says. Now’s as good a time as any to offer up his apology. It’s better if he doesn’t have to see the disappointment in Mr. Stark’s face. He grits his teeth at the thought. “I didn’t mean to behave that way, and I promise it won’t happen again.”

There’s a beat of silence that lasts an eternity, then Peter feels a puff of laughter against his neck.

“Pete,” Mr. Stark says affectionately. “You got drunk, you didn’t murder anybody.”

“I killed your tree,” Peter says, mournfully.

“Oh honey,” he feels a tickle of fingers against the short hair on his neck. “It’ll make good firewood. You didn’t do anything wrong, and next time you’ll know your limit. Trust that I have done much more embarrassing things than that on a tame night.”

“I’m still sorry you had to see me like that,” Peter says, firmly.

“Well, then unnecessary apology accepted.”

Peter nods thankfully, feeling the tension and guilt leaking from his body. He tightens the last few screws on the record plays, finally putting the record back on, B-side up, to test his work.

When Bad, Bad Leroy Brown comes on, it’s at full, jangling, speed.

Mr. Stark steps back, putting the torque wrench back in its designated spot.

Peter collapses down into one of the chairs, folding his legs criss-cross and leaning back onto the musty-smelling cushion.

“You know,” he says. “I could help out with other things too.”

Mr. Stark leans against a window pane, crossing his arms in a way that Peter notes shows them off to full advantage. He raises an eyebrow in question.

“Like, if you had projects you wanted to work on in the lab?” Peter says with a little less confidence. He should probably want this a little less. “I could help. You could tell me what to do. I mean, you always say I need more practical engineering experience. It could be like a continuation of my internship.”

He looks over at Mr. Stark through lowered eyes, searching for a reaction.

“You could use more practice with fabrication,” the man says after a long pause. “Theory isn’t worth much without practical application.”

Peter rolls his eyes at the well-worn phrase.

“Okay,” Mr. Stark says, nodding. “There are a couple things it wouldn’t hurt to work through together. I guess we never really got to finish your internship up properly.”

Peter feels the smile spread across his face, too wide and bright, but he can’t help it. Back in the lab with Mr. Stark. This is going to be _awesome._

Before he lets himself get too carried away with the thought, though, a twinge of guilt returns. There’s another person he owes an apology.

Mr. Stark tells him he can probably find Nebula down at the garden, sounding nervous to be putting them together.

Peter’s a little nervous too. It's clear Nebula doesn’t like him, but he’s even more determined to make peace now. If he wants to spend the summer making crazy science with Mr. Stark, he can’t do that with her working against him.

Peter puts on his friendliest smile and goes to find Nebula.

*

“What more do you want from me?” Nebula asks, but the little plant in front of her makes no reply.

It looks mournful, its leaves drooped and heavy, going brown around the edges. She’s tried everything she can think of – varying levels of sun and moisture, fertilizers and supplements. It will not do anything but wilt.

The yaro bulb was a gift from Gamora. It is an apology of sorts, Nebula thinks, though Gamora always avoids actually saying she’s sorry.

Someone has let her sister know about the specific relationship she has with Morgan. Nebula suspects Rocket had a talk with her. She seems to be making cautious inroads with the Guardians, never divulging her location, but keeping in touch at least, same as she does with Nebula. It’s only Peter Quill she seems to be avoiding with any real will.

“You have a _daughter_ ,” Gamora had said, the last time they talked.

Her voice had gone strangely soft, tilting her head at Nebula in confusion. She didn’t understand, can’t possibly understand, the change she sees in her sister. Or how hard-won it has all been.

“No,” Nebula had insisted. “That’s not what –“

But she hadn’t had the heart for a full-throated denial. It’s not _technically_ true, but that’s not the way it feels.

So the plant is an apology, a peace offering perhaps. It harkens back to another time. Not a better time, but a brief shaft of sunlight in their dark and murky lives. It’s nice to know that Gamora remembers it too.

The summer of Nebula’s tenth cycle, Thanos had been called away to quell an uprising among some of his followers and Proxima Midnight had been left with them as a disinterested guard. They spent the summer in isolation, in a paradise on one of the planets that long ago had been subject to their father’s unique form of justice.

They had fallen asleep to a tropical breezes rocking their hammocks, risen with the sun and stolen yaro root from the local farmers, climbing to the tops of giant goldenwood trees to lounge and eat the tangy-sweet fruit, competing to hit targets with the center stones.

It was the first time in their young lives that they hadn’t been pitted against one another, and Nebula had felt something tentative forming between them. A peace. An accord. When she looked at Gamora, the silver highlights on her skin glistening in the afternoon sun, her heart fluttered and refused to still.

But in the fall, their father returned and sparring recommenced. Any summer peace meant nothing. Gamora still never lost their battles. To try to make her better, Thanos ripped Nebula’s arm from her body, and replaced it with something new.

It’s an old wound, long cauterized. It hardly hurts to touch it now. Which is maybe why Nebula is dwelling on it instead of what happened with Tony.

She doesn’t feel guilty. She refuses when she’s doing what’s for the best, guiding him as well as she knows how. But the look on his face had been so downtrodden when she’d left this morning. Nebula doesn’t like being the one to put that expression on his face.

The problem is, after this long together, she can read him like a book. It didn’t take long to tease out the thing that would keep him from Peter. Not bad behavior on the boy’s part, she had been silly to think that. No, of course it would be the thought that he’s taking advantage, doing ill instead of good. All these years, and he still doesn’t trust his own intentions. The stain of the merchant of death still lingers in his mind.

It feels wrong to take advantage of that, like something her old self would do. Maybe Nebula doesn’t completely trust herself either. Maybe she shouldn’t.

She growls, and the leaves of the yaro rustle with her breath.

“Oh, what do you know?” she mutters at it.

“Whoa … Is that an alien plant?”

Nebula jerks around to find Peter Parker hovering at the doorway to her greenhouse. She immediately hates the sight of him here. This place is hers, but he just strolls in like it’s nothing.

“Did someone invite you in?” she asks sharply.

“Sorry,” Peter holds up his hands. “Can I come in? I like your tent.”

“It’s a greenhouse, Parker, not a tent.”

Nebula rolls her eyes so viciously it almost hurts, but she doesn’t protest any further when he steps inside. He’s at least careful to walk between the neat rows of seedlings.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, I know that? I just … Never mind. So is it?”

Peter nods in the direction of her dying yaro bulb. It’s true it doesn’t look Terran, leaves a deep purple, if going brown at the lacy edges, stalk milky white.

“Yes,” she acknowledges with a sigh. “It does not seem to like being transplanted. I have been unable to make it grow.”

“Just don’t give it any blood,” the boy says with a snort, like he’s telling a joke. Nebula suspects she’s missing something.

“I have already tried iron supplements for the soil,” she says. “No effect.”

“No, um, it was a joke?” he says, blush creeping up his face. “Well, not a joke really. A reference. I guess that’s not the same thing. And you probably haven’t seen Little Shop of Horrors.”

Nebula purses her lips and shakes her head.

“You’d like it,” he says. “I think. We should watch it. Have a movie night. It’s about a guy who likes plants. Like you.”

He doesn’t wait for an invitation, just plops down in the dirt beside her and reaches a tentative finger to brush against the ridge of one mauve leaf, touch light.

“It’s beautiful,” Peter says, voice low. “Still kind of incredible to me that it came from a different planet.”

“You really should get used to such things.”

“I know, right?” he says, stupid grin spreading wide across his face.

They lapse into silence. Nebula refuses to look at the clod. He’s the one who’s invaded her space. He can make conversation if he wants. She had no problem with quiet. She digs her fingers into the dirt, cool and soft from tilling. It has a centering effect.

“Um,” Peter breaks the spell of quiet. “So, I know you and Mr. Stark have the jump on me on all the mechanical stuff, but biochemistry is my jam. I’m pretty good.”

“Congratulations.”

“I just meant,” he perseveres through her sarcasm. “That I could help with your plant. If you want? Take a look at chemical compositions for the plant and the soil, and see if we can create something to help it grow. It would be a fun project.”

This makes Nebula turn to him, confused. Surely he cannot still believe she can be charmed. But his face is frustratingly sincere. She hates the thought of relying on Peter Parker for anything, but at the same time she imagines what it would be like to taste a ripe yaro root again, bright on her tongue like summer sun.

“If you like,” Nebula says. “But I do not think it will come to anything.”

Peter shrugs.

“Maybe not, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Cool. This will be cool.”

“Cool,” Nebula echoes, wrapping her lips around the word like it’s a too-sour berry. “If that’s all you wanted …”

She motions toward the greenhouse door, hoping he will take the hint and leave her alone.

“No.”

“What?”

“No that’s not all?” Peter says, wiping his hands nervously against his jeans.

“Well?” she prompts. Nebula really had not expected to be spending so much time alone with the boy, and did not have a chance to steel herself for the interaction.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he says, marginally more confident now. “About last night. I didn’t intend to get drunk, and I apologize for not having more control.”

Nebula leans back, confused. Can he really be that naive? Can anyone?

“You are apologizing to me?”

“Yes,” he says with a nod. “I’m very sorry. And I know you don’t like me very much anyway, but I hope we can get past that? Be friends.”

He’s biting his lip nervously while he waits for her reply, eyes large and docile as a small woodland creature. All she can do is think how one so guileless will be devoured by the cruel universe in a single bite. It is so much worse than she thought. Nebula would prefer him to have at least some sense of self preservation. It is almost enough to soften her heart.

“We are not friends, insect child,” she says, not unkindly. “But I do not hold a grudge against you.”

It even has the benefit of being true. She doesn’t hate him, but that doesn’t mean that the threat he represents is any less.

Peter swallows, waits to see if she will elaborate. She doesn’t.

“Oh,” he says, voice very small indeed. “Okay. I guess, uh, I guess that makes sense.”

He stands, attempting to brush the dirt from his knees.

“It’s okay, though, that I take some samples for our project?” he asks, bringing a hand up to his mouth as though to chew on his fingernails before he realizes there is dirt under them. “I don’t want to intrude if you’d rather I didn’t.”

“It is fine,” she agrees. “Thank you.”

He nods a couple of times, painfully awkward, before turning to leave. Nebula holds in a snort of laughter until after he’s gone. It absolutely isn’t fond. It isn’t.

*

“Okay,” Tony says. “Important decision. Which do you want? Dark Lord Cthulhu, or Duck Army?”

He holds the toys up in turn for Morgan from her place in the bathtub, chin-deep in bubbles. Her eyebrows scrunch together as she considers first the mesh bag full of tiny rubber ducks and then the partially melted and warped former octopus squeaky toy who earned his name after an unfortunate run-in with an oven burner.

Tony knows better by now than to offer her both. If he does that, she won’t come out of the tub until her entire body turns pruney. He loves his daughter’s imagination, but sometimes it does require regulation efforts just for the sake of time.

“Thulu!” Morgan declares after careful consideration, throwing up her hands to accept the deformed sea creature.

Tony leaves her muttering something about world domination to Cthulhu, motioning for U to watch her while he makes a couple phone calls.

It’s probably a bad idea, well definitely, but he’s excited by Peter’s offer to help him with some projects. He’s been so restless without the outlet of tinkering, and his brain is already buzzing with ideas. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way Peter had gone all sweet and compliant when Tony told him what to do, unprotesting when he had leaned in close to guide his hands.

He shakes himself out of the memory. It’s not about that at all. It’s all about the work. He wants to get back to the work.

Many of the components Tony needs for the project he has planned will have to be special ordered, but a quick call to Vick at the salvage shop in Norrell Harbor confirms he can pick up enough later this afternoon to get them started. No time like the present.

The sound of entirely too much sloshing water pulls him back into the bathroom, where he finds Morgan attempting to involve U in bath time with a cup of water over his claw.

“Morguna,” he cautions with a snap. “Mind the circuits.”

Once she looks appropriately apologetic, he makes a call to Harbor Nursery to have Jean set aside a few goji bushes for them, hoping it will put Nebula in a slightly better mood.

That bit of business done, Tony returns to wash Morgan’s hair for her, check that she’s scrubbed behind her ears, and forcibly remove Cthulhu from her hands despite her protests of “But, Daddy, the peasants are revolting!”

By the time he’s wrangled her into a fluffy towel, and then into clothes she has carefully selected for herself – Tony’s not sure bright orange goes with purple, but he’s not about to make a thing about it – Nebula has returned from her work in the garden and is downstairs finishing up a few dishes over Dum-E’s protests.

“You will break them,” she tells him over a sad whistle. “Do not pout.”

“Can’t pout,” Tony says, entering with Morgan propped on his hip. “No emotions.”

She purses her lips at him, but doesn’t bother to argue.

“So,” he says. “I thought we might make a trip into town. Vick’s got some stuff for me, and I made a call to the nursery…”

He’s hoping the news of more plants will distract her from the first part of the announcement. No such luck.

“What stuff?” she asks. “You know you aren’t ready to work on anything big yet. You have not even been doing your physical therapy.”

“I do it often enough,” Tony protests. “And I won’t push it. Pete said he’d help me out.”

“What did I say?”

Peter slips inside from the back door, ruffling at his hair with a towel, t-shirt damp from where he’s pulled it on too quickly after a swim. Why is he always wet? It’s truly unfair.

“That you’d help me in the lab,” Tony says after taking a moment to compose himself. “We’re going into town to pick up a few parts, if you want to come.”

“Oh cool,” Peter says. “I just need to put on some real clothes. When are we leaving?”

“Thirty minutes?” Tony says, raising an eyebrow questioning at Nebula, half expecting her to protest.

“Fine,” she says, flicking her hands as though she’s removing something unpleasant from them. “Push yourself if you want. We’ll go to town.”

“Daddy,” Morgan says, tugging at the collar of Tony’s shirt. “Can we go to the movies? Can we? We haven’t been in forever.”

She gives him the big pitiful eyes, and Tony easily concedes. It will be nice for them all to have an outing together.

“Why not?” he says. “A movie sounds fun.”

Tony keeps several vehicles on the property in case he needs them, but he foregoes the flashier options in favor of the dark green Ford pickup that’s nearly as old as he is. He’s kept it in perfect condition, but it's nothing that will put the locals in awe. He’s also camouflaged himself in a well-worn flannel rolled up to his elbows, an old baseball hat and aviator sunglasses.

Sure, everyone in town knows who he is, but if he doesn’t dress as himself it means they’re less likely to feel obligated to give him any kind of special treatment. It’s playacting, but at least it’s a show they’re all familiar with.

With the addition of Peter, they all barely fit onto the truck’s bench seat. Peter squeezes in between Tony and Nebula, and Morgan perches on Nebula’s lap with an arm thrown around her stomach to further secure her.

As he turns the keys in the ignition, he catches Peter’s eyes roving curiously around the cab – the cracked leather seats, the hand-roll windows, the 8-track player beneath the radio dial.

“What?” he asks.

Peter shrugs.

“Just not what I was expecting. Again.”

“Just ‘cause the old girl’s got a few years on you doesn’t mean her engine doesn’t purr, Parker.”

Peter’s lips twitch in silent laughter.

“Believe me sir, I would never think that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony grumbles. “Somebody pick some tunes. 8-tracks are in the glove compartment.”

Peter rustles around in the glove compartment and pulls out a chunky tape, slotting it into the player.

“So weird,” he whispers to himself as AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap blasts out.

Tony rolls down his window and sticks out an arm to tap the beat against the door. It’s about an hour drive into Norrell Harbor, the closest town of any consequence to the cabin, and they make it through both sides of the tape before they make it to the outskirts, houses in bright blues, reds and yellows growing closer together until they finally give way to main street and then the central square with the courthouse and the village green bordered by shops and offices.

They have lunch at a diner on the square – fresh fried rosemary potato chips and chunky chicken salad on toasted rye – and then Nebula heads off to the nursery to pick up her plants and Tony takes Peter and Morgan over to the salvage shop.

It’s late afternoon, and the sky above is a perfect crystalline blue, so they walk from the diner a couple blocks over, Morgan holding one of Tony’s and one of Peter’s hands.

Vick’s shop is a labyrinth of boxes and spare parts, dusty and organized in a way discernable only to him. Tony greets the proprietor and sends Morgan and Peter off to explore. Vick is the kind of guy who sucks on his teeth and waffles at any question you ask him, so it takes Tony half an hour of negotiation to collect all the parts he needs. It’s not that he can’t afford the prices, but he gets the impression that the man lives for a little bartering, scratching his belly in a pleased sort of way when they’re in the thick of a disagreement.

By the time they’re settling up, Peter and Morgan have meandered back to the counter, Peter hauling an ancient floppy disk drive and Morgan holding something that may at one time have been a wind-up doll but now looks like something out of a horror movie with a caved in head and stuffing leaking from its gut.

“Don’t worry,” Peter whispers to him when he catches Tony’s disturbed expression. “I told her we could rebuild it together. It won’t look like that for long.”

“It sleeps in the garage,” Tony says with a grimace. “I don’t trust that thing.”

He holds a commanding finger up to stop Morgan’s protests, and then pulls the drive out of Peter’s hands to place it on the counter.

“No, Mr. Stark, I was gonna get that,” he says.

Tony waves away the objection and has Vick ring him up.

“Your money’s no good here, kid” he says, using a hip to push Peter away from the register so he can settle up.

They run through a few more chores – a grocery store order, a trip to their miniscule branch of the local library where Peter, thank god, talks Morgan out of A Tale of Two Cities and into something where a princess runs away from home to go live with dragons. Tony casts a grateful look at him while he helps Morgan collect her choices. It sounds like it has 100 percent fewer guillotines, which is a positive. He’s not sure what exactly his daughter would have done with that inspiration, but something would definitely have lost its head.

By the time they get their haul back to the truck, Nebula is leaning against the side door waiting for them, two large bushes already tied down in the truck bed along with a couple of pallets of new sprouts.

By then, it’s almost time to head to the movie.

“Snacks!” Morgan exclaims when they’ve all piled inside once again. She starts a quiet chant “Snacks, snacks, snacks…”

“What am I, a monster?” Tony asks her, tousling her hair aggressively. “Of course we’re getting snacks.

They stop at the gas station on the outskirts of town and convene at the door while he pulls out his wallet.

“Okay, kids and gentlebeings, the name of the game is gas station sweep. Five minutes each. Five dollars each. The person with the best haul who makes it to the register in the time wins.”

Morgan is bouncing on her toes like she’s already had too much sugar. Peter raises his hand sheepishly.

“Yes, Mr. Parker?”

“Um, what do we win?” he asks.

“Glory and renown,” Nebula answers decisively.

“What Blue said,” Tony concurs with a clap of his hands.

He gives out the $5 bills one by one. Morgan’s is quickly crinkled in her tiny fist, Nebula’s neatly folded and tucked away in a hidden pocket. Peter tugs his out of Tony’s grip reluctantly, just a hint of pink rising to his cheeks as he does.

“Five minutes,” he cautions the motley group, studying his watch. “On your mark. Get set. Go!”

Morgan zooms off with a squeal, Peter close on her heels yelling “No! Wait for me!” Tony and Nebula share a look before sauntering off at a more sedate pace. He peruses the trail mix offerings while keeping an eye on Morgan laying waste to the candy aisle. He’s going to have to leave the staff a giant tip.

They try to limit Morgan’s sugar intake at home to Saturday morning cereal and the occasional s’more or juice pop, which means that whenever she’s presented with an opportunity to ingest large amounts of processed sugar she goes a little crazy. Worse than a rampaging alpaca by several degrees.

Tony shouts out a one-minute warning, then starts a 15 second countdown that sends his daughter pelting for the register, arms clasped firmly around several crinkling plastic bags. Clearly not looking where she’s going, she rams directly into the back of Peter’s knees, sending a very full slushie cup up into the air. It’s surely only enhanced spider reflexes that allow him to handily catch the cup on its descent and prevent Morgan from getting a sticky blue raspberry bath.

“Nice job, sticky fingers,” Tony tells Peter under his breath as they line up to check out.

Peter only laughs in reply.

Back at the truck, they all lay out their hauls on the hood, Morgan balanced with her feet on the bumper and Nebula at her back.

Tony’s own choices of freeze-dried blueberries and black coffee have no hope of winning, and Morgan frowns lets out a petulant “Daddy,” at his display.

“I like what I like,” he says.

Nebula’s assortment of jerky and bag of hot cheetos is similarly dismissed.

“Whatcha got there, Pete?” Tony ask.

In addition to his giant slushie, Peter has also purchased a box of Tastykakes.

“I thought I’d share with everybody,” he offers.

“Cheating!” Morgan declares, pointing an accusing finger at Peter.

“That’s right, babydoll,” Tony concurs. He tsks at Peter. “She’s got you there, kid. No bribery allowed. At least not with butterscotch krimpets. I mean, snowballs maybe.”

“Fair enough. Not like I had a shot anyway,” he says, gesturing at Morgan’s candy bags. “I mean, gummy bears _and_ sour worms? How do you compete with that?”

Morgan crows in victory then sweeps the candy bags back into her arms like they’re chips on a poker table.

Harbor Point Drive-In is just a few minutes up the road, but by the time they get there, cars are already lined up waiting to purchase tickets. The sun is just beginning to set, and it’ll be another half hour or so before they can start to screen anything.

The billboard at the front lets them know the drive-in is doing a monster movie double feature tonight – Lilo and Stitch followed by The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

“I had no idea drive-ins were still a thing,” Peter says.

“It’s better than a regular movie because it’s outside, and there are swings,” Morgan informs him.

They eventually make it past the ticket booth and find a parking spot in the back as twilight settles in solidly. Peter takes Morgan off to the little playground set up for kids in the very front next to the giant movie screen.

The air smells of sunscreen, car exhaust and butter-laden popcorn and is punctuated every now and then by childish screams and the honking of horns. Tony hooks the boxy speakers on poles by each parking spot over the rolled-down truck windows while Nebula makes a nest of blankets and pillows on the rooftop for prime viewing.

The darkness descends quickly once the sun is fully set, and the movie screen flickers to life, speakers crackling as they warm up. Morgan and Peter return from the playground just as previews are wrapping up, the little girl skipping excitedly with her hand tucked into one of Peter’s while she points things out to him along the way.

The warmth that rises in Tony’s chest at the sight makes him feel like he’s just downed a shot of whiskey. He clears his throat to banish the feeling.

“Daddy I swung so high!” Morgan exclaims when she sees him. “I almost did a loopy loop!”

“You weren’t supposed to tell him that,” Peter says.

“You should know better than to expect my child to be able to keep a secret,” Tony tells him. “And you, little miss. No defying the laws of gravity until you’re at least in double digits, clear?”

“Fine,” Morgan says, then squeals in laughter as he picks her up and tosses her once into the air for emphasis.

She buries her face in his shirt, giggling breathlessly, when he catches her.

“Movie’s about to start, and someone’s reserved you the best seat in the house,” he tells her when she pulls back.

Nebula, settled on the roof ensconced in blankets, pats at the spot beside her.

“Would you like to sit with me?” she asks.

“Yes!” Morgan cries. “Up!”

Tony hands her up to Nebula and the two of them cocoon themselves in, blanket draped over their heads just as the Disney castle lights up the screen.

“You will have to explain it to me,” he hears Nebula tell her as they settle in.

Tony turns back to Peter.

“Hope you don’t mind sitting inside with me,” he says, motioning to the truck.

“Nope,” Peter says, shoving his hands in his pockets and meandering over to the passenger’s side of the truck. “Best seat in the house.”

The last is said so low that Tony thinks he probably imagined it.

Peter gets easily drawn into the movie, slurping down his quickly-melting slushie and absentmindedly stealing a handful of Tony’s blueberries, despite Tony slapping at his hand when he does.

Tony’s seen this one a fair few times because it’s one of Morgan’s favorites, so he mostly zones out, enjoying the crisp night air and the gentle but indiscernible babble from up above of Morgan explaining the movie to Nebula for what must be the hundredth time.

Eventually, the smell of popcorn gets to be too much for him, and he excuses himself, picking his way along the dark graveled path to the concession booth where he buys two giant tubs of butter-laden goodness.

By the time he gets back, the credits are rolling on the first movie, and Morgan is curled up fast asleep with her head in Nebula’s lap, probably crashed out after so much unexpected sugar. Nebula holds a cautioning finger to her lips when he approaches, but accept the bucket of popcorn when he offers it up.

“Aw, yes. Popcorn,” Peter exclaims when he gets back in the truck.

“Hey,” Tony protests as the kid takes the bucket from him. “I know you’ve got that spider metabolism, but you still have to share.”

Peter pouts, but scoots closer on the bench to make for easier sharing.

“This is nice,” he says, turning his face away from the monochrome glow of the movie screen to look at Tony.

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” Tony says. “I know we go at kind of a slower pace out here than what you’re used to.”

“No,” Peter shakes his head, and he can sense the weariness in the gesture. “It’s nice. I could stand to go a little slower.”

Tony holds his breath, thinking that maybe this will be the moment when Peter comes out with it already. _Tell me what’s wrong, kid,_ he thinks. _I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me._

But Peter doesn’t continue down that path. He shakes his head again and the tired wrinkles around his eyes get smoothed away. In their place, he gives Tony a brilliant flash of smile.

“I like the drive-in,” he says. “I can imagine you going when you were my age. Watching a movie like this, pretty girl by your side.”

“How old do you think I am exactly?” Tony says, maybe too defensively. “Because this movie was, as you kids say, _really old_ when I was your age.”

Peter ignores his protest.

“I bet you were a smooth operator, sir,” he says, tone full of suppressed laughter. “Master of the old yawn and stretch.”

“You’ll have to enlighten me on that one,” Tony says. “Because I have no idea what you’re talking about.

“Oh come on,” Peter says. “You must.”

Tony stubbornly shakes his head.

Peter pointedly sets the now half-empty popcorn bucket off to the side, and scoots in closer to Tony’s side.

He clears his throat, glances down at his wrist to a non-existent watch. Should Tony get him a watch? He should definitely have one. Maybe a nice Jaeger. Nothing too ostentatious, but quality is important…

“Golly gee, look at the time,” Peter says in the tone of a bad dramatic re-enactment.

He lets out a big yawn, stretching his arms high, and then reaching out behind Tony, letting his arms rest across the back of the bench seat.

“I’m sorry, what are you doing right now, exactly?” Tony asks, but quiets down when Peter scrunches his face up and shakes his head.

“I’m demonstrating,” he says.

“Yes, it’s captivating,” Tony snarks.

Then Peter lets his arm slide off the seat and rest lightly around Tony’s shoulder, his arm warm and heavy, and it sort of _is_ captivating.

“Very smooth,” he manages.

“Just the opening move,” Peter says. “See from here I can move in a little closer.”

He does just that, plastering his side and Tony’s together.

“Maybe cop a feel. Surreptitiously, of course.”

Peter’s arm moves lower until his hand rests just over Tony’s bicep. He gives it a lingering squeeze.

Tony’s jaw drops open in surprise, but he can’t quite manage words just now. He turns to look Peter full in the face. Peter’s eyes are dark, his cheeks lightly flushed, and the beginnings of a smirk are twitching his lips upward.

“It helps that it’s a scary monster movie,” he says, voice pitched so low it’s almost a whisper.

He uses just the tiniest bit of his spider strength to tug Tony minutely closer, reaching out to hold Tony’s hand in his free one, then he lets his face go soft and sincere.

“You can hide your face on my shoulder if it gets too scary, darling,” he says, with just a hint of affectation.

“That’s some move, Mr. Parker,” Tony says, voice embarrassingly breathy. “How many starry-eyed girls have you pulled this one on?”

Peter bites at his full lower lip.

“Just MJ,” Peter says. “She was not charmed. Oh, and Harry from Academic Decathlon. He was more amenable.”

Tony’s throat is desert dry when he swallows. The revelation shouldn’t mean anything to him.

Their faces are tilted in close together. Peter smells green like the weedy lake water, warm like clean sweat and sour-sweet like the blue raspberry slushie he’s been drinking. When his tongue peeks out of his mouth to swipe at his lips, it’s tinged blue. That detail should make Tony pull back, but all he wants to do is chase that candy chemical taste across Peter’s lips and into his mouth.

Their breathing syncs, and the silence stretches and just hangs there, taut and vibrating with something. Tony leans forward just a tiny bit and …

“Aaaah!”

There’s a scream and a thump against the truck door, sending Tony and Peter flying apart. The popcorn bucket gets pushed onto the floorboard, scattering kernels everywhere, and from the open window, Morgan is hanging upside down and cackling.

“I’m a monster,” she declares through giggles. “But just a little one.”

“Jesus,” Tony says, clutching at his chest. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

He lets out a laugh, then catches Peter’s eye where he’s kneeling in the floorboard, trying to gather up the popcorn. They both burst into helpless laughter. Tears leak from Tony’s eyes as Nebula lowers Morgan down through the window from where she’s been holding her ankles securely.

“Did I scare you?” Morgan asks.

“You sure did, babydoll,” Tony says, through jags of laughter. “A plus monster work.”

After they all settle a bit, it’s decided that they should head back to the cabin. Despite her monster impression, Tony’s afraid the Creature from the Black Lagoon might give Morgan nightmares if she’s conscious for it. And it’s nearing midnight besides.

“You’re going to turn into a pumpkin,” he says over her protests.

Nebula secures her nesting materials in the back of the truck, and they head out as quietly as possible in deference to those still watching the movie.

Morgan quickly drops off to sleep as they make it to the main road, stretched out across both Nebula and Peter for maximum comfort.

Nebula falls asleep as well, a little way down the dark, abandoned road. Her face goes slack and carefree in sleep, head propped against the window so that her expression is mirrored back at her.

Peter runs his fingers through Morgan’s hair and leans his own head back against the seat, closing his eyes.

Tony thinks he’s asleep too, watching the road, but studying the kid’s profile in his periphery – long neck and strong jaw and dark lashes brushing his cheeks.

The quiet is peaceful, broken only by the shush of tires on the road and Morgan’s soft, sleepy murmurs. Then a warm hand settles on his thigh, and he looks up to see Peter giving him a soft, sleepy look that Tony can’t quite interpret.

He turns back to the road, but he lets his fingertips rub over Peter’s knuckles before he settles his hand over the kid’s. He feels the moment Peter drifts fully into sleep, muscles going slack, hand falling away.

Tony misses the contact, but the touch had settled something squirming in his gut – guilt, fear, confusion, he doesn’t know what else. It’s enough. Enough for now. He drives them home.


End file.
